


Appointment in Samarra

by Quieta



Category: Original Work
Genre: Abuse, Captivity, Corruption, Crisis of Faith, Degradation, Despair, Double Penetration in One Hole, F/M, Filmed Sex, Forced Affection, Forced Orgasm, Forced Pregnancy, Foursome - F/M/M/M, Gang Rape, Hate Sex, Intercrural Sex, Kidnapping, Non-Consensual Kissing, Nonconsensual Reverse Harem, Obsession, Painful Sex, Possessive Behavior, Rape/Non-con Elements, Sexual Slavery, Torture, Whump, World Travel
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-26
Updated: 2021-03-07
Packaged: 2021-03-08 00:26:53
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 11
Words: 40,921
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26666662
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Quieta/pseuds/Quieta
Summary: Shirley DeForge, the wife of an up and coming presidential candidate, is kidnapped by three mysterious mercenaries hired by people with plans for him to never become president. As the time ticks on and they move from country to country, frustrations start to rise and facades start to crack, forming a toxic, nonconsensual four-way relationship fraught with lust, abuse and tragedy.
Comments: 280
Kudos: 258





	1. Chapter 1

In Chefchouen, the city of blue, tourists and citydwellers mingle together. 

A German man smiles, backpack weighing him down as he leans over a shaded market. The man behind the table gives a gap toothed smile and indicates his wares, beaded handbags and stained ceramic plates. Carts sell baskets of fresh ripe fruit and blocks of strong, crumbly goat cheese.

Dealers flit like shadows among the crowds, offering _kif,_ sticky cannabis rolled into cigarettes, to curious tourists. Women in headscarves balance pots of wheat and grain over their covered heads as they cluck and chide their children running wild down the alleys. A contingent of teenagers strides down the dusty street, dressed in loose t-shirts. Laughter is loud and bright in Morocco.

The entire city is dyed blue. Blue from the stained buildings, to the blue cloudless skies. Baskets hang on the clean walls of the city in spots of color.

Beyond the handbags, the brightly patterned rugs, the vendors with their djellabas and scarves for sale, a boy ducks behind a rug to burst into an alleyway. He hears footsteps pound the dusty street ahead of him, and stops.

A woman comes around the corner, hand clutching the blue building edge, coughing and sobbing. She is dressed scantily, in only a shirt and panties, and her yellow hair is a mess of tangles. Purpling and yellowing bruises cover her body. Both of her eyes are puffed black and swollen, tears tracking down her face.

She bends over sobbing in front of the frozen boy, arms clutching her abdomen. _"Aidez-moi,"_ she gasps. _"Aidez, Aidez-moi."_

The boy stares blankly at her, at her ruined, shaking body, at her round, tear-stained face. _"Va là-bas,"_ he says, pointing down the street towards the police station. The woman takes off again, and as she rounds the corner, he sees blood dripping down her thighs in streaks of red.

The boy stands there paralyzed in the streets of Chefchouen, surrounded by deep blue buildings, as if he were a strange dot in the sky.

***

_"So, Shirley, where exactly did you meet Buck?"_

Shirley smiled neatly at the rows of the intent audiences; the wide-eyed, frumpy housewives clutching their handbags and watching avidly. "Well, I was a military brat, so we met each other right on the base in North Carolina. He was transferred from Fort Leonard Wood and I saw him in the field and--well, that was that!" She laughed.

The host laughed along. "And you just fell in love immediately!"

"Oh, yes. He was the only man on base who looked good in a high-and-tight!"

She expected the laughter at this point--the jokes came easily to her. The interviewer pressed a hand to her giggling mouth before returning to her questions. "Mrs. Shirley DeForge, what's the first thing you're going to do when you're First Lady?"

Shirley put on a show of pondering, trailing her eyes around the chintz pink of the stage, the carefully arranged cushions at the nook of their velvet sofa. "Well," she said, "I think I'd redecorate the White House--and I know just who to call!"

After the laughter from the audience, the host turned to the cameras, her ginger hair coiffed and her pearl earrings gleaming. "Yvonne Harrick from the Home Decorating Network. Please enjoy our commercial break."

***

Shirley DeForge carefully dabbed the blush onto her cheeks.

_How long has it been since I washed my makeup off?_

She could see the tiredness creeping into the corners of her eyes, the tiredness that she seemed to feel perpetually, jetting from one campaign tour to another, another talk show to another, no time to rest, no time to spend alone with Buck. For a woman who was only in her mid twenties, she felt so much older. She carefully arranged her thick blonde curls, which were coming loose from their tightly combed hairstyle, and spruced them up with hairspray. She delicately touched up her eyeliner and outlined her lips. 

Her cell phone rang, and her heart leapt when she saw the name. _"Hey, Shirl."_

"Hi, hun--how is Arkansas?"

_"I'm cutting this tour early. I'll be back in Pennsylvania in a few days."_

Shirley felt a wave of relief. "That'll do us both good. I think we both need a break."

 _"That, and there's no way Kamowitz is winning Arkansas anyway."_ Buck laughed. _"See you soon, honey."_

Shirley ended the call. She couldn't hide her smile as she returned to the stage, where the commercial break was ending and Yvonne was taking her seat once again.

"Well, Miss DeForge, you look like you died and went to heaven!" Said Yvonne Harrick.

"Maybe I did," said Shirley, beaming as she sat next to her on the sofa.

***

Pennsylvania was no North Carolina, but Shirley enjoyed Philadelphia and its bustle and history. The Ritz-Carlton was a beautiful domed hotel done in classic style, and it lit up at night like a bonfire. The inside was sweeping, with greek-style colonnades and leather sofas where businessmen and women took calls and sipped drinks. Shirley picked up a bottle of champagne at the front desk before getting on the elevator.

Their room was clean and spacious, with a single white, queen-sized bed and an attached living room. Her high heels clacked on the marble floors as she bent over the back of the sofa to kiss his ear. "You look a sight for sore eyes."

Buck looked up at her with that tired, sunny smile she loved so much. "Been a hell of a month, Shirl."

She set the champagne and glasses on the table, kicked off her heels, and cuddled up to him on the white leather sofa. "You're such a hard worker. Hitting three whole states just in April."

"I wouldn't be half as strong without you by my side." Buck curled his hand into hers. Shirley buried her face in his neck and inhaled that familiar scent of pressed suits and detergent--he only used one kind of detergent, the one Shirley had grown up using and had introduced him to. It made her heart wrench with familiarity. "You've been stronger than I ever was, during this campaign," he murmured into her ear. "Making all those appearances, not stopping once, even after your mother died."

At the words _your mother_ something cold and regretful settled into her belly. "You know she was old."

"Yeah, but I knew you used to be close to her. If my mother died tomorrow I don't think I could have kept a brave face like you did."

Trying to put the matter out of her mind, Shirley whispered, _"I'll be right back,"_ into his ear and departed into the bathroom. She scrubbed the makeup off until her face flushed pink, combed her hair out until her light, curly hair flowed loose, and slipped on a slinky pink nightdress. In the mirror she looked fresh and young, with her round face, glistening hazel eyes, and blush warming her neck and tops of her breasts. Her heart pounded.

When she went back out, she was disappointed to see that the champagne bottle still hadn't been opened and her husband was slumped back on the white sofa.

"Buck," she whispered, climbing into his lap and curling her legs around his waist. Her nightgown was riding up, and his belt buckle was a shock of cold against her. She pressed her lips against his, but his were slack, and even when she shrugged the strap of her nightgown down, he didn't seem to notice.

"I think I'm going to sleep early," Buck murmured, rubbing his eyes. "I have to be in Michigan tomorrow evening."

Shirley watched her husband go to bed with a nagging feeling of disappointment. She lay down on the couch. The leather was cool against her back. She watched the fan twirl lazily above her, and poured herself a crystal glass of bubbling champagne. 

Drinking alone, her thoughts went back to her mother, and the last time she had seen her. The cancer had taken its toll on her, and she barely looked like the spry, happy 70 year old she had been a scant few years ago. _Is this what's in store for all of us?_ She wondered. Her mother who had cradled and kissed all her woes away, who waded in the water to catch frogs with her, who bought her her first horse. And then, bathing her mother's pale, wrinkled forehead with a cold washcloth, in that ranch house that had been the place of so many good memories but now felt like a tomb. Her eyes had been dim with dementia, staring at her like a stranger.

The night outside the window was lit by a thousand flashing neon headlights, signs, and sirens, but Shirley felt as if she were tucked away in a miserable dark corner. For being the wife of a presidential front-runner, she felt as if she should be happier.

***

Buck was gone the next day, a scribbled note on the bedside table letting her know he had jetted off to Lansing for a speech. She felt out-of-sorts that he didn't wake her up to tell her goodbye. Shirley could tell it was going to be a bad day already, by the raindrops trickling down the window and the dark, angry stormclouds gathering over the skyscrapers. 

Shirley combed her sunny hair out and buttoned her fur coat, then took the elevator. The lobby was sleepy. Most people were congregating in the breakfast area, with the tureens of steaming scrambled eggs and fresh baked croissants behind glass cases. 

Shirley went through the hotel's revolving double doors to her limo in front. Rain was already streaming off the car's shiny black exterior.

She slammed the door behind her and let herself sigh in the warm air conditioning of the interior. "Take me to City Hall, please." She had a meeting with the county commissioner in a few hours, and then, God willing, back home to North Carolina.

The spires and buildings began to move slowly, then fly past as the limousine sped up. As she checked her Louis Vuitton purse for her lipstick, her eyes wandered over to the driver.

"Excuse me," she said. "You're not my usual driver."

Indeed, her regular chauffeur-- a balding older man-- was not in the driver's seat.

There was a younger man.

He looked over, and she saw that he had thick, curly black hair and deep-set dark eyes framed by long eyelashes. He was arresting, in a boyish way, but something about him put her ill at ease. 

"He called in sick," said the man. He had a neutral, personable accent, Middle American--but the way he pronounced words was off. Something set off a tripwire in the language center of her brain.

"You're not wearing the uniform." The warmth of the car clung to her skin, making it clammy even with the freezing rain dripping down her window.

"I was not given one. I apologize. It must have been an oversight by the company."

The man had switched his gaze over to the windshield, where rain was falling in turrets to blur the packed street in front of them. He had a slight smile tilting his lips, one that tugged a dimple from his cheek. In every way his appearance was pleasant…but _something_ about his smile...

Even with every atom of her body screaming _there's something wrong,_ Shirley did the worst possible thing she could have done. 

She ignored her instincts.

Shirley took out her lipstick and lined her lips, unable to stop her hand from shaking. In the car mirror she saw her face, her wide, hazel eyes and her eyebrows quirked and trembling and the way her red lips were drawn tight. She looked up. "Pardon me, we're not--Philadelphia City Hall is the other direction."

"I am taking a shortcut." 

Chauffeurs were not supposed to take shortcuts

The street had thinned out. Abandoned buildings lined cracked, empty sidewalks. And the skyscrapers had long vanished in the rearview mirror.

Shirley was clutching her lipstick tube so tightly the plastic bent and warped.

He turned abruptly into an alleyway that ended in a chain link fence and a reeking dumpster, and the car slid to a halt.

There was one still, silent second, where only their breaths sounded in the interior.

Shirley erupted. She lunged for the door handle, but a strong hand wound in her long hair and brutally yanked her back. Tears started in her eyes. She lashed out with a leg as he pinned her to his lap, trapping her neck in the crook of his knee while his other hand pinned her wrists together. 

As she writhed and a high, panicked scream welled in her throat, she felt a prick at the side of her neck, and a few seconds later, her vision began to blur. A wave of wooziness hit her, and her mind was dimming, and as her body relaxed, she was dragged kicking and screaming into the abyss. The last thing she saw was two dark eyes above her, watching her as blankly and impassively as a stalking cat.

***

The wings of the fan moved lazily above her. Shirley was stretched out on her Ritz bed, arms hanging over the sides and head resting on the white coverlet. The movement was hypnotizing. She heard voices from the periphery, and she wondered if it was room service or cleaning. Wouldn't it be lovely if Buck ordered room service for her so she didn't have to get out of bed or go down into the lobby? She was so very tired. Wasn't Buck so _sweet?_

Her neck ached.

Shirley saw buzzily a few male figures standing to the side, hands in their pockets, talking. Their bodies, faces kept drifting out of focus. Her mouth was dry, her vision blurred.

She moved lazily, tilting her leg to the side as she rolled over until a harsh hand grabbed her thigh.

Shirley was flipped over, legs forced apart and spread, and she realized suddenly the wind from the fan was washing over her _bare_ legs and arms. With a belated jolt it was clear that _she had no clothes_ on, as a hand yanked her short skirt over her thighs.

The woman could barely move. Her arms resisted weakly as a new dress was pulled over her head. Another man was watching her, putting his cigarette out on a tabletop, eyes tracing carefully over her form with pale foxlike eyes.

She was pulled upright and a wig was forced over her pinned-back hair. 

Shirley was a new woman now. Her dress was too small, a long-sleeved tube dress that hugged her curves tightly and made it hard for her to breathe. Her wig was short and black, and her curly hair was piled underneath it so tight it made her scalp ache.

With two men escorting her, she was led stumbling out of whatever house she was in and into a hotel trolley, where the loud chatter and noise of the other passengers suddenly washed over her and made her pass out.

***

There is a certain feel that comes with an airport at midnight.

The voices echoing over the speakers. The endless treads of baggage moving past the X-ray machines. The smell--the sterile scent of overpriced jewelry kiosks. The sullen-eyed fast food workers serving pizza that tasted like paper. People, dead-eyed in their layovers with suitcases clutched in each hand, trying to find an outlet to plug their phones in by the clustered racks of black leather seats.

Shirley noticed all this peripherally as she was escorted to a departure gate. The chlorine stung her nose as the TSA agent barked at her, and she lifted her arms above her head and was frisked. Hands ran roughly down her body, until she was pushed through. 

She tried to talk, couldn't. Her tongue felt like it weighed a ton, sitting solid and heavy in her mouth. She was pressed in on both sides by the hard bodies of men, her head slumped. _She couldn't speak. She couldn't stand. She couldn't breathe._

The white blaring letters on an overhead sign caught her attention briefly before they slipped away. _Philadelphia International Airport._

Oh god. Oh god. _Nonono._ She managed a whimper, but that was all that escaped her throat. The man whose arm was in hers clamped down hard until her elbow erupted in pain.

By the time the overhead speakers blared, echoing distantly in her ears, both her arms were looped in a strong grip as she was escorted to the departure gate.

"Welcome to Iberia Airlines, Carine Weiss," was the name she heard from her as she boarded the plane.

Carine Weiss.

Not Shirley DeForge.

Her heartbeat was pulsing against the backs or her eyelids. It was sluggish, but becoming more and more rapid as adrenaline warred with the aftereffects of the drug 

The smiling stewardesses. The narrow passageway leading to sterile rows of leather seats. The clunk of luggage being slid onto the overhead.

Shirley was pressed down in a middle seat, her rear sinking into the leather. The cold was a shock against the backs of her legs. She stared at the back of the seat in front of her, barely able to keep her head up. Her arm ached. Her neck was stiff, she just wanted to _sleep._

A voice came from beside her, faintly bemused, with an accent she couldn't place. "You might as well take a little nap, Carine. It's going to be a long flight. A very, _very_ long flight."

She could just barely make out features--light hair, the cold glint of glasses, and a mouth drawn in a contemptuous twist--all floating separate, so she could not coalesce them into one face.

Then another hand slipped behind her head, tilting it sideways to rest against someone's shoulder, and the smell jarred her brain as it immediately transported her back to that rainy day, the air conditioning blowing across her clammy skin as she stared across the car at--

The hand tightened on her head. "Ssh," whispered a familiar voice as her sobs were muffled in his shoulder. "Just go to sleep. When you wake up, you'll be in your new home."

As she drifted off against her will, she felt a hand on her exposed thigh, inching upwards as she slipped away.

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This has been in my drafts for months, so I'm finally able to publish it since Ragnatela is over. I find it easier to work on several stories at once I guess!!  
> Anyway, MIND THE TAGS. This is going to be a very rough ride. I have it written up to nine chapters (which is when the thriller aspects come in) so up until then updates will be sprightly and at the very least, weekly.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shirley tries to get her bearings, and makes an escape attempt.

_Buck's face was flushed and his red hair spiked with sweat. He pressed a long, soulful kiss to her nape as he spurred the mare down the valley._

_Shirley laughed and tilted her head back to kiss him back. Her dress was riding up above her thighs, warm against the horse's sleek, glossy hide. Buck slid one hand over her thigh._

_The ranch house came into view. It was large, two-stories and built strongly, with a red-painted sloping roof and a wooden deck. Inside were plush, old-fashioned rooms, sweeping beds and stone fireplaces._ _The horses grazed in a paddock beneath a window._

_Their forest retreat had long been in the family, and Shirley had many happy memories of exploring the woods and riding horses around the many acreage before coming home for her mother to tuck her in._

_It was familiar. It was home._

_Mom was sitting drinking a tall glass of iced tea out on the deck. Her coiffed dark hair was loose and unravelling, and her eyes were pinking at the edges. Had to have been a Long Island Iced tea..._

_Mom watched and smiled as Buck led the mare to her paddock, but as Shirley climbed up the wooden steps onto the porch, she could tell her mother was worried. She frowned at Shirley's flushed face and crumpled-up summer dress, still sliding down her legs._

_When they were in the kitchen, Mom turned to her. "Baby," she said softly. "There's something I have to tell you…"_

_"We're not doing anything, Mom!" Shirley said quickly, chopping the onions with a bit more force than needed. The spirals of drying peppers dandled lazily in the sunlight, and her mom's famous stew boiled on the stove._

_"...honey, I know you're gonna, though."_

_Shirley stared at the chopping board silently. Water dripped off the onions from where they had been washed in the sink._

_"Shirley, you need to understand. Men only want one thing from women. No matter how nice they seem, men your whole life are going to want to get between your legs. You need to be watchful. Don't give your trust away easily."_

_"Buck wouldn't do that." She blushed as she dumped her onions into the pot. Their grandfather clock chimed from down the hall, long and echoing down the darkwood floor._

_She heard Buck laugh from the yard as he spoke with her father._

_"All men do that." Mom's voice was tired and gentle. "Doesn't matter who they are, how professional they are… they have a worm in their minds. In the end, it all comes down to sex for them."_

_***_

When Shirley awoke again, she was more lucid. Whatever drug they gave her was fading into the recesses of her mind. She blinked hard and pulled herself up on trembling weak elbows, and someone pressed the lip of a water bottle to her lips. "Drink." 

She guzzled greedily, water spilling down her chin as it washed over her parched throat in a heavenly wave. She coughed and wiped her mouth with the back of her wrist, and her eyes finally focused on the room she was in.

It was tiny, boxed-in. The walls were painted dingy green, hung with pictures that just looked like swirls of color to her hazy eyes. There was a bed covered with a stained and ragged duvet. The lamp next to the door was on, a faint smudge of light against the open window.

Her eyes followed the trail sunlight, and the block of light nearly blinded her. Past the window she saw tall, tan buildings, lined with arching black windows and overflowing with pots of flowers.

A movement from the side of the window of a tall figure, and a voice she didn't recognize. "She's still coming out of it." 

"It was a high dose you gave her." this voice sounded like ground glass, hoarse and deep. 

Shirley looked beyond the first man and saw a dark figure sitting on a chair beside the door, elbows resting against his knees. As her sight finally began to clear up, she saw dark hair and razor-sharp features, and pale eyes that were sharp as a fox and tilted in unnatural mirth.

There was movement to her left. The man by the window had knelt by the bed. "Are you quite awake, lass?" She then recognized his voice as the one from beside her on the plane.

Despite her predicament, something deep-seated in her felt mildly offended at being called a lass. A _girl_ . So many talk show hosts and radio broadcasters had condescendingly called her a _girl,_ insinuating--a _girl_ as a first lady? Just like Buck, a wide-eyed _boy_ out of touch with reality. What hope did this young couple have of running the country--

His cold hand grabbed her cheek, yanking her face back and forth. "Are you _awake?"_

"Yes," Shirley muttered. Her head throbbed. Speaking made her throat twist. She clumsily pulled herself out of his grip. "Where am I?"

A harsh laugh from the man in the chair. "Nothing you need to know about, little girl."

His accent was harsher, different from the other mans'. _Leetle girl._

His mouth smiled wide, revealing tips of sharp, pointed eyeteeth. The crinkle in his eyes had a dark tinge as he looked her over lazily, and Shirley pulled the edge of her skirt over her thighs.

The man beside her spoke up. Closer, she saw light blond hair swept over his brow in a strangely old-fashioned style, and a pair of spectacles over calculating green-gray eyes. "Miss DeForge, I'm afraid we have a lot of explaining to do." His voice was authoritative and stern, like Buck's when he gave a speech. 

"Your husband has some very powerful enemies in whose interest is for him… not to become president. And we are simply contractors for that purpose." He sat up and adjusted his glasses. "And until he steps down as candidate, then you shall be living with us. You won't be deprived of food or water. We don't want you dying. But you will not leave. Trying to escape would be a _very_ bad idea." The ominous tone of his last words made her shiver.

"You will never know our identities." The blond man looked over his shoulder at the fox-eyed man, then back. "In fact, in this time of utmost secrecy, we don't even know each others' identities. We will be moving rather a lot--from house to house, country to country. Our identities, and yours, will be changed frequently. I understand it will take a while for you to accept this, but it is best for all of us if you come to terms with it as soon as possible."

This was too much to handle. All the information was spinning in her head, turning her body cold. The only thing that prevented her from erupting in horror was her dreamlike, delayed reaction.

Shirley tried to curl up with her knees tucked under her chin, but an arm was already wrapped around her waist. Belatedly she turned around, and was met by the big dark eyes of the man who had kidnapped her in the car. Close-up, she could see his plump cheeks and long eyelashes--he looked so _gentle,_ how could he be capable of doing something like this?

The fear flooding back, she tried to wriggle out of his grasp, but he had a tight hold on her, and hugged her to him, kissing her forehead. His lips were warm. "Ssh. It is okay…"

"Why are you being so strange? Treating her like a daughter or pet or something," scoffed the fox eyed man. "I bet you want to do more than kiss Miss Future First Lady, hm, lover boy?"

The blond man interjected sharply. "We need to contact our client. What are our pseudonyms for Spain? Have you gotten them down yet? Both of you, let's go." The blond man seemed to have most authority--or at least, he acted as if he did. Shirley could tell that he spoke English as a first language--but his accent was strange, not one she had ever heard before. 

The hand around her waist reluctantly slid off as the dark-eyed man stood up. He gave her one last lingering, doe-eyed glance as he exited the room along with his compatriots

The blond man glanced back as well, eyes cold. He unwrapped a lollipop and popped it in his mouth. "Make yourself comfortable. You are going to be here for a while."

And Shirley heard the _click_ of a lock behind him.

She sat there for a while, completely numb. The sun was going down, bathing the tan buildings outside with yellow light.

Then she began to cry.

***

There were bars on the window.

Shirley tried them instinctively, her instinct melting into terror, before collapsing backwards, heaving with pure ice setting in along her limbs.

She tried the door. Locked. She banged and screamed on it for a while until she realized no one was coming. Then she collapsed against the side of the bed.

The woman curled up into a ball, spasming with pure and utter fear. The iron bars of the bed dug into her back. Shadows chased her legs along the square of dimming light from the window.

When her tears were all spent and dried, she dreamily held her hands out in front of her. Then she did something she had not done in months.

She clasped them, trembling, and prayed fervently. _Dear god who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name..._

Outside, the dusk set on the Spanish villas, turning their walls a glowing orange. Shirley did not know how long she had been praying for, before the door swung open.

It was that man. The fox-eyed man, with the sharp face and light eyes. He laughed cruelly at her as he saw her kneeling. 

"What are you praying for? No one is going to come rescue you, least of all your God."

She stared at him fearfully as he threw some clothes on the bed and tossed a bottle at her. "Put this on your hair."

Shirley looked at the label. It was cheap hair dye, the kind that washed out after one or two showers. "Right now?"

"Yes, right fucking now. We're going to the airport in an hour."

She got up on shaky legs and put a hand on the wall for balance as she limped into the bathroom. Fox gave a frustrated sigh and grabbed her wrist, yanking her in.

In a few minutes she was bent over the sink, dye dissipating in her hair. Fox's hand was clenched around her neck, forcing her head down. His nails dug into her skin, holding her in place. After waiting impatiently, her hair looked a fried, dingy kind of red, but he seemed to believe it adequate as he let her go.

"Take this."

She stared at the white tablet fearfully. "What is that?"

"What do you think it is? It's the same shit we gave you last time except in a pill. Of course, we're going to keep you doped up. You're gonna be higher than a street whore while you're with us." He gave another nasty laugh. Whenever he smiled, he showed all his teeth. He had sharp canines in his mouth, pointed, too, like a fox's. Everything about him was vulpine.

Shirley reluctantly swallowed it. She felt it stick in her throat, and suppressed a gag as he stared at her hardly for a few seconds, then left. Those eyes of his. They made her colder than a winter's day. Small-pupiled and freezing, a color so light it was almost invisible. They promised violence and stone cold callousness. She had only seen those eyes once, in the eyes of a soldier whose hand she had shaken in a publicity tour. She had spent days trying to rid herself of the itch on her palms.

As he left the room, Shirley shoved a finger down her throat and gagged up the dry tablet. Her throat working down another gag, she slowly dressed in the clothes she had been given, a pair of tan shorts and a white t-shirt with a picture of the Eiffel Tower on it. Typical tourist garb. She found a passport in the pocket. _Tamara Baldwin. Place of birth, Galveston, Texas._ The photo on the passport was her--an old picture, one she recognized dimly. It had been way back in her private Facebook, concealed under her privacy settings. She was smiling on a yacht, curls bouncy and loose, her husband with his arm around her. Her husband had been cropped out of the picture, and the background whited out. A chill dripped down her spine. _How had they… how had they gotten this picture?_

The door swung open and the blond man with glasses poked his head in. "You're ready?" His eyes slid distastefully over her hair. "Bloody hell, next time I'll just do your hair. Trust that nasty drunk to do anything right." 

Spain was sunny and warm. The date palms shadowed the whitewashed city walls. High-set windows fenced in by black lattice stared down over the ancient cobblestones. The group hurried down the boulevard to catch a cab.

They were all dressed as facsimiles of American tourists--jeans, sunglasses, t-shirts. She was beginning to realize their talents in the effortlessness of their mannerisms, the way they rubbed their noses and looked around at the city as if they had never seen it before. Blondie stuck out a thumb and hailed a taxi in a broad Texan accent. 

Soon Shirley was squashed in between Fox and Doe Eyes. Blondie was in the front seat. She was in the middle, so she couldn't yank open the door and make a run for it. Doe Eyes had her hand clasped in his--not tightly, but gently, his hands cupped over her own. It was strangely affectionate--she simply could not puzzle the boy out. He had a baseball cap on top of his curls and looked adorable--All-American, sweet, friendly.

But she could not forget the look he had given her in the limousine. That dark, emotionless, terrifying gaze. As his eyes met hers in the shaded interior of the taxi, she quickly looked away. 

Fox was leaning his arm against the ceiling of the car, the air from the cracked window brushing his dark hair back. Fox had a solid frame, while Doe Eyes was slight and slim. Everything about him screamed someone you would cross the street to avoid, even dressed down in jeans and a t-shirt. 

Blondie was laughing with the taxi driver in the front seat. He was seamless in his identity, making folksy references to his nonexistent upbringing in Texas. 

Shirley could not bring herself to look at either of the men anymore. Her panic was still slow-moving, the realization setting in gradually. _I'm trapped. I'm trapped._

Outside the window, the sun-baked stones were giving way to concrete.

Doe Eyes' hand squeezed hers comfortingly, warm and calloused.

***

The airport _\--Región de Murcia International Airport--_ was bustling and busy, stylish and sleek with neat rows of paved stones lining the front. Palm trees rustled against the deep evening night as stars began to twinkle above the warm air. She was escorted through the airport double doors, and the cold air shocked her into high alert. Crowds of people pushed past them, chattering on cellphones, holding briefcases and a rainbow of sticker-embossed luggage. Frazzled vacationers and harried businessmen trickled like ants under the booming loudspeaker.

 _They think I'm drugged. Act like it._ Shirley pretended to sag against Doe Eyes' shoulders as they led her to the ticket counter.

 _"Pasaportes?"_ The man at the ticket countter was sleepy-eyed, and barely skimmed his eyes over them.

Blondie handed over the passports. _Bret Redmond. Tamara Baldwin. Niles Coombs. Tanner Perez._

These people did not have a social security number. They did not have a birth certificate. They were unpeople, just a face on a passport. A bevy of nonexistent Texan tourists.

Baggage check was quick as they had no baggage, or even coats. Doe Eyes--"Tanner Perez"--gave her a smooch on the neck to look like a loving boyfriend. His cold lips lingered on her skin for longer than she'd like.

From the flash of the screen on the wall, she saw her departure time was in fifteen minutes. "I need to go to the bathroom," Shirley begged, slurring her voice to make it look like she was drugged.

Blondie glanced at her, eyes flashing with irritation under his glasses. "You can wait."

"I can't. I _really_ need to go."

Blondie sighed heavily and looked around. As luck would have it, a bathroom was up the hall. "All right." They escorted her there, and then she was standing on her own. Blondie held up three fingers. "Three minutes."

She stumbled into the bathroom, mind panicked and whirring. There were two women gossiping at the sink, and a kindly looking woman in a blonde bob and beanie washing her hands. As she smiled at her, Shirley's story broke in a babbling wash. "Please, you have to help me. You have to--I've been kidnapped. I need to get out of here. Please--please give me your coat and hat. I need to disguise myself. I need to get _away_ \--"

For one terrifying moment she was scared the woman didn't speak English, but then the woman's face blossomed into disbelief, then--as Shirley's breaths came in sharp sobs--understanding, and she took off her fluffy coat. "Please be safe," she said as Shirley rapidly put on her coat and hat. She wanted to kiss her, but time was running out. 

Shirley bowed her head and quietly exited, keeping her face shielded underneath the beanie. She saw out of the corner of her eye Doe Eyes bending down to pat a small dog, and Fox and Blondie looking bored. Fox had a cigarette lit up.

She buried herself in the crowd. Tears were beading in her eyes. _Keep walking. Don't run._

The red lit exit came into view, and relief washed over her. She sped up, pulling her coat tightly around her and pushing her way through the crowd, and she reached a hand out for the steel handle--

Something cold and metal touched the exposed small of her back and fried her brain to its neurons. The jolts made their way down every limb, making her fall on the floor, spasming. As she fell, she saw the slight glint of a taser being returned to his belt.

A smooth voice said, " _Mi novia esta epiléptica."_ He scooped her gently in his arms. Shirley's mind was scrambled as he brought her to the leather rows of chairs, where people waited in lines to depart. _Flight 201 departing now._

She could tell it was Doe Eyes by the way he gently held her and by the way he tucked her head underneath his chin. Her whole body felt like water as he sat down, holding her tight. Shirley's head was shocked, her body twisting like she had been on a rollercoaster. It hurt _so much._

When she was able to shakily hold her head up he let her go, and she stumbled onto the floor, clutching Blondie for balance. 

Blondie kept a tight hold on her arm as she boarded the plane. Shirley's mind was a blur and every step pained her. Her head drooped as she took her seat on the plane between Fox and Blondie. 

The coldness of the buckle dug into her mound of venus. Her bladder felt like it was going to loose from the muscle contractions that wrecked her body, and she pathetically pulled on Fox's sleeve. "Please let me use the bathroom," she whispered, voice breaking from humiliation.

Without looking at her, he silently unbuckled himself and pulled her down the aisle. The leather of the seat tops clung to her sweat-sticky fingers as she held onto them for balance. He shoved bodily her in the airplane bathroom, then slammed and locked the door behind them.

And then it was just them in the sickly tan interior. A heavy silence fell over both of them.

Shirley shakily clutched the plastic of the sink with her bent and chipped manicure. Fox stood there as still as a statue, eyes like frozen icedrops.

He smashed her head into the mirror so hard that a spiderweb of hairline fractures started at the edge of the mirror. The pain exploded through her skull, harder and more agonizing than the worst headache she'd ever had. She couldn't think. She couldn't breathe as he ground her head into the wall. 

Shirley fell away, and he shoved a knee between her legs and pinned her to the wall. His arms were caging her in, one on each side of her. His face was so close, she could count every eyelash. His face was angular and sharp, with a cold set to it and livid chill in his eyes that told her he was capable of doing very, very bad things to her.

"Listen up, cunt. I'm not like those weaklings back there. I'm not going to put up with any of your bullshit. If you try to run again, I'm going to snap your ankles like fucking twigs, no screwing around with tasers or anything. Understand?"

His hissed that against her lips. Their faces were an inch apart, and she could smell the pungency of cigarette smoke on him.

"Yes…" she whimpered.

He yanked her hair hard.

"Yes!" Tears were bleeding down her bruising face as he let go and smiled. He looked more threatening when he was smiling. His fanged smile made her heart turn to ice. 

"You're pretty. You've got a good body, too, a firm set of tits and a nice ass. You're going to have to watch yourself around me. If I'd had my way I would have raped you the instant you woke up. Hmm, I would have fucked you _while_ you were waking up. That would have learned you some manners immediately." 

Fox gripped her hair again and crushed his lips to hers. She gave a muffled squeal until he clamped his hand harder, forcing his tongue as far into her mouth as it could go. Shirley's gorge rose--she had never kissed another man but her husband, and Buck's kisses were soft and tender, not cruel and lustful, like his. 

He changed his angle, breathing her in deeply, and his sharp tooth scraped her tongue. She felt the hard ridge of his cock through his jeans, grinding against her belly, and his hand left her hair to undo his fly.

Shirley separated from his lips quick enough to beg a murmured "Please don't, I'll do anything, don't r--don't _rape--"_ her voice collapsed into sobs.

"Shut up. I'm not going to stick this in you. Not yet, at least." He pushed between her legs with one movement, lifting her to seat her on the top of the lid of the toilet, and she instinctively wrapped her legs around his hard, strong waist. His cock was out now, and he rubbed it between his hard fingers, erect and straining between with precum to guide it between her legs.

His bare cock pressed against her pussy through the thin layer of her shorts, beading with fluid and throbbing so hard she could feel it even through the cloth barrier. He rubbed it slowly against her lower lips, pressing up for it to seek her soft center. 

Then he began to thrust, slowly first, then grinding his cockhead so hard that Shirley's heart leapt to her throat. She was getting slick, she was _liking_ this, especially when the throbbing swell pressed onto her clit, making the little nub of flesh flare with pleasure. Her hips jumped.

Her shorts were damp with their combined juices, making his dick slide easier and faster. Her clit was a throbbing button, and her lower lips were spread so far that his cock was _in_ her through her shorts, boring into her body, its shape molded to her hole. The pleasure was swamping her, from her belly to her thighs, a pleasure that came from not getting fucked for _months,_ and dear lord, his cock was so big and his body was warm, and she was _coming._ She was _coming--_

He gave a heavy thrust, moaned a little in his throat, and his cock erupted. Warm semen soaked into her shorts. She could feel some of it trickle through the cloth into her hole, and her pleasure melted to sharp fear. _I'm not on the pill, Buck and I have been trying for a baby for years._

Shirley squeezed her legs together as he slowly drew away, wiping sweat from his brow. His black hair was damp with sweat, sticking to the nape of his neck.

Fox smiled at her again, and his eyes were darts of ice. They danced cruelly.

"Look at the mess you made. Looks like you enjoyed it more than me, little girl."

She didn't want to look down. She felt semen dripping down her legs.

Fox buckled his jeans and yanked her up by her arm, and escorted her out of the bathroom down the aisle. Some people were looking at her judgmentally. The humiliation washed over her in a cold wave.

Back in her seat, she buried her face in her hands. Blondie saw the tear tracks on her face and took out a handkerchief to give to her to wipe her face with.

"What did you do to her?" He said sharply. "She's got a bruise on her forehead. You had better not--"

"I just gave her a lesson, _Bret._ So she doesn't go running off again. You can't give any woman an inch, they'll take a mile."

Blondie seemed satisfied at that explanation but still ruffled as Shirley wiped her face. He tucked a stray curl behind her ear in a somewhat fatherly way. "You've learned your lesson, then?"

Shirley nodded, but pain radiated across her skull, another plan was already forming in her mind.

***

When Conna Matthews received the email in the Mr. Deforge's inbox, she knocked over her cup of coffee and didn't even bother to clean it up. She walked right into her boss's office, where he was having a conversation on the phone. As soon as Buck DeForge met her stricken eyes, he knew immediately something was very wrong, and ended the call. 

"What's the matter, Conna? What…"

As soon as Buck saw the image on the screen of the laptop he went white, and when he saw the text of the email, he went whiter.

On the screen was a picture of Shirley DeForge. She was slumped over an unfamiliar bed, obviously unconscious. Her blonde hair was a mess spread over the pillow, and her dress was riding crudely up over her thighs. Her eyes were half-lidded and blank, the color of a swamp.

The text read: _We have your wife. If you want to see her again, resign from the presidential race immediately. Only upon resignation will she be released._

Buck sat back slowly, hands going up to entwine in his red hair. Conna began to cry. "Is this a joke? Would Shirley even do something like that? What are we going to do, Buck?"

"It's not a joke." Buck's face was colorless. "There's only one thing to do: nothing."

Conna blinked. "But--"

"Never negotiate with terrorists. It just gives them carte blanche to do whatever they want." He met her eyes. "We need to wait them out. Put out a press statement saying that Shirley's feeling under the weather and staying home in North Carolina."

Conna was still crying. Buck's thumb went to brush a tear from beneath her eye. He cradled her face. "We'll get through this, Conna. We'll get through this together." He pulled her into a deep kiss, and as they stood with their arms around each other, he whispered into her ear, "Besides, you know, that means we're going to have… a lot of time alone from now on."

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So far we are getting deeper into the interaction between these characters--enough, at least, to know that Shirley is in deep trouble.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shirley arrives at her next destination, and settles down--as much as she can. Doe Eyes reveals a glimpse of his true self.

Shirley Glenda DeForge had spent a large part of her life on planes. Hangars, fighter aircrafts, jumbo jets. Being flown on 24-hour flights to whatever country her father was next stationed in, coloring happily as her parents dozed off beside her. Sleepless red eye flights following her husband from state to state, the whine of neighboring infants in her ear and the distant aching of want for one her own in her belly.

But she had never had been as miserable, as frightened and as despairing as those few hours on that short flight.

The semen and fluid between her thighs had crusted and congealed, and she shuddered in disgust with every movement. She could almost feel it seeping inside her as it soaked into the denim. She stared fixedly at the leather seat in front of her as the plane touched down.

The flight attendant's voice chiming over the interflight informed them they had arrived in… in… her mind was trying desperately to recall her fifth grade Spanish class when Blondie and Fox pulled her up and hustled her out of the plane as quickly as they could. They met Doe Eyes halfway down the aisle, who was unloading his luggage from the overhead. He smiled as soon as he saw her, and locked his arm with hers. Shirley hated to admit it, but she already greatly preferred him to her other two captors.

They made their way out of the airport quickly. Fox had a way of ploughing his way through dense crowds. Then again, maybe they just took one look at his anvil jaw and colorless eyes and backed off of their own accord.

Shirley pulled the hem of the T-shirt over her shorts. The splotch between her legs was still dark, and she didn't want to look as if she'd wet herself. The outside was airy and clean, sunrise glowing in an orange stripe over the horizon.

Seeing the sunrise made Shirley realize just how tired she was, with two straight days of no sleep. She rubbed her eyes as Blondie spoke a few words with a smoking, tired-looking cab driver, and they were off.

She stared out the taxi window as the city bloomed into view around them. First she saw the tops of tall, spiralling structures, then their car started bumping as they hit cobblestones.

Cream-colored buildings lined the street, elaborate columns and arches stretching for blocks and blocks. They were tall enough to blot out the sun, and cast blue-black shadows over the cobblestones.

It was breathtakingly beautiful. She could see the signs of disrepair on them--rot worming its way between the bricks--but they stood stolid and formidable, standing over the wide streets like sentinels. Spiraling towers spiked into the fresh morning sky topped with sloping, steep roofs like the turrets of a castle. It was like they had plunged through the veil into a fairy land.

But soon the magnificent buildings were fading away into the rearview mirror, and the streets turned dingier, the grand palaces transformed into faceless concrete apartment buildings. The farther they went, the more decrepit they seemed, and the people that flashed past seemed harder and poorer. The level of unease made her neck prickle, and she found herself holding Doe Eyes' hand tightly. He rubbed her hand comfortingly with his thumb.

As people bustled around the sidewalks, she noticed the signs were in a different language--an unfamiliar one that she couldn't place or pinpoint. She could have been anywhere in Europe, if she was even in Europe at all, and that prospect scared her.

They creaked to a halt in front of one of the ragged buildings, paid their fare, and Shirley was reluctantly dragged towards the building.

It was blocky and gray, completely indistinguishable from the rest of the apartment buildings. It was scarred with white graffiti and lined with blank windows upon blank windows. She could see flashes of bright laundry left to air between the buildings, and a few sad satellite dishes rigged to the gray sides before she was shoved inside and into an elevator. 

Shirley wiped her eyes. "Where am I?"

No one answered. Fox chuckled a bit. She felt rage building up inside her.  _ Of course they're not going to tell me. They want to keep me in the dark.  _

"You are not going to be seeing much of the outside, what is the point?" Doe Eyes ribbed her slightly, putting his arm around her shoulders, and she shoved him off. Now that she was in close proximity to him, she was able to study his features more carefully. His hair was dark and loosely curly, falling in ringlets to frame his round, boyish face. His mouth seemed to be pursed permanently in a pout, which had curled downward when she had shoved him off.

When the elevator squeaked open, there was a dirty stone floor and two metal stairwells at one end of the hall--the walls were worn and chipped away, revealing bare patches of wall. Her heart dropped.  _ I'm… living here? _

She was led to a solid door with a gleaming, brand-new lock fastened under the rusted doorknob. Fox unlocked it and twisted the padlock off, and pushed her right into her new home of God knew how long.

The room was small, cramped, with faded blue wallpaper and a kitchen table crammed close to a washing machine, dryer and stove. A squat refrigerator hummed in the corner, and kitchen cabinets lined the walls, huddled close together as if to escape the permanent wave of chill that seemed to linger in the air.

Doe Eyes escorted her to a rickety wooden door and into a small, warm bedroom. From the window she could see bright cold sunlight start to fall upon the tops of the buildings.

The rug was soft under her feet, and as she sat on the bed, the scratchy sheets and wool blanket felt better than the Ritz. The exhaustion hit her in a wave, after days of adrenaline battling the drugs that seeped through her system.

"You had better get some sleep," said Doe Eyes softly, and she didn't argue.

She crawled under the covers, and after a moment, the bed depressed as a warm body rolled next to her.

"Sleep well, Shirley. You always looked so tired on TV." Doe Eyes' voice was so soft, and his body so warm, and she was  _ so sleepy  _ that if she closed her eyes she could imagine it was Buck next to her, in bed with her, holding her tight and whispering into her ear.

She let her head rest on his shoulder as he pressed his cheek to her hair. And as she drifted off, his hand went to caress her leg, a gentle lover's touch like a spider crawling up her thigh.

***

When Shirley awoke, the left side of her face throbbed with pain. Even resting it against the pillowcase made it burn. She lifted her head and turned her face towards the sun, then slowly blinked her eyes open.

She had to have been asleep for a day and a half. It looked like it was midday outside. The bedroom was cozy, with a white radiator underneath the small window and scarlet curtains that tinted the room in shades of red. The floor was soft and threadbare, and there were pictures on the wall, small black-and-white photographs of unfamiliar landscapes.

Shirley stood up, then sat down again as her head spun. The ache sank its fingers deep into her brain, throbbing like a wiggling worm. Pressing one cool hand to her bruise, she stood up again, and her eyes focused.

The bed was large, a metal skeleton made for two people. Which she then realized--her bedmate was gone. She felt sweeping relief.

There was a small conjoining bathroom  _ (the head,  _ said her father's voice gruffly). She fumbled for the metal doorknob and pulled the string connecting the lightbulb, and it shuddered on.

The bathroom was grimy, and little bigger than a closet, containing only a toilet and a sink. She checked her face in the stained and smeared mirror, and her heart almost stopped.

For a moment, the glass reflection of the porcelain-perfect Shirley DeForge, cheeks rouged and lips perfectly outlined, stared at her back, the lights of the backstage shining in back of her silky golden curls. Then she blinked, and it was a stranger--more of a stranger than even  _ that _ woman had been.

The woman staring back at her had frazzled red hair, poorly dyed the color of a cherry lollipop. Her curls were fried straight, with only a few kinks heralding what used to be perfectly round curls. She was half-disfigured by a puffy purple bruise that spread across her face, half-swelling one eye shut by the lower lid. 

The rest of her skin was bare, almost clean, devoid of foundation or blush. That part she could recognize. In bits and pieces she saw the woman she hadn't been in years. No contouring, no makeup, nothing. Round-faced and plump-cheeked, with a dimpled chin and teeth that showed too much when she smiled. 

Long light eyelashes framed eyes that were light hazel, green-ringed brown as bright as sunlight. They tracked her own body with a morbid wonderment. Her body was loose from her figure-hugging dresses--she was a tall woman, and well-shaped, with heavy breasts and a slim waist. 

The way the excess skin sagged past her shorts hem would have horrified her in any other circumstance. But she just felt like herself, in a strange and bleak way. Tall, broad-shouldered, and duck-footed. A woman's body, bare and honest in its simplicity, the way her nails were worn to farmer's stubs and the way her shirt strap bit into her tanned shoulder. 

Her clothing. Shirley realized with a jolt she was still wearing her tourist's garb from the other day, semen still crusting outside it  _ (and inside her).  _ She pulled off her shirt and rolled down her shorts, and washed herself inside hurriedly with a wet washcloth. Then she left the bathroom and began sorting through the closet in search for clothes.

In the middle of a reaf of suits, she found a haggard looking pair of sweatpants and a black camisole. As she put them on and tied the pants double-tight, Shirley heard voices outside her door. 

She tried the doorknob--it was unlocked. In the ragged kitchen, the blond man and the fox eyed man were seated at the stained table, talking and drinking from mugs. Fox was smoking, stubbing his butts out on an ashtray on the table. He wore a leather jacket that was rolled up at the sleeves and unzipped in front, showing a camouflage shirt underneath.

Blondie looked over. His glasses glinted sharply in the sunlight. He, too, had ditched his tourist wear--he was wearing a tweed suit like an Oxford professor, looking oddly formal for the surroundings. His hair was parted to the side, light as the sunshine. Beside him on the table were a few discarded lollipop wrappers, a strangely prim contrast to Fox's overflowing ashtray.

"You're a sight. Bruises do your face no favors, Miss DeForge."

Fox took a drag. "I disagree. I think her face looks good with a few bruises."

Shirley's voice was hoarse. "Where's...Tanner…?"

"He's at church like a  _ good boy,"  _ sneered Fox. 

"He's not Tanner Perez anymore." Blondie tapped a stack of passports against the table. With the other hand, he held a lighter to them, and they went up in a lick of flame. "Tanner Perez never existed. He arrived at his destination, exited the airport and disappeared into thin air. I'll tell you who is coming back from church, though. Christos Theodorou, a businessman from Athens, who is here for a conference and staying with his three friends at this apartment building."

That gave her chills. They used and discarded identities so easily. How could Buck find her if they were constantly on the move and switching pseudonyms?

He threw her a passport. "Your name is Kristy Macintyre, you're an American again. My name is Felix Vandamme and I'm attending the conference on leave from Belgium. The big drunkard sitting there is Lorenz Diemer, from Frankfurt on behalf of his organic fertilizer company. Memorize these details. I don't want you slipping up."

"Or you will regret it," Fox warned in his guttural accent. She had zero doubt she would. He was leaning back on his chair, muscled arms thrown behind his head, and she could make out the brawny outline of his chest through his shirt. His eyes were sharp and cold as they wandered over her body, pinpointing between her legs with a cruel smile. She squeezed them together, aware of the dried semen still caked to her shorts.

The front door creaked open, and Doe Eyes poked his head through. He was carrying a brown bag and wearing a stiff black business suit. He had his curly hair combed back, although the ends teased up in ringlets. "Oh, you're awake, Miss Shirley? You slept so deeply I thought you would be out all day."

"Don't call her that, Christos. She's Kristy Macintyre now."

Shirley felt the hair on the back prickle. He had watched her sleep? His eyes crinkled in a smile as he met her gaze, and she looked away hurriedly.

"Get going, 'Lorenz'," said Blondie to Fox, standing up. "We need to make a phone call and let our clients know we've arrived." 

Fox sullenly stubbed out his cigarette and stood up. "And put a bloody suit on," muttered Blondie. "You look like John Travolta in that trashy getup."

They left through the door, and the padlock snapped loudly behind them, making her flinch. Shirley sat down slowly at the table, still not meeting Doe Eyes' eyes. But a sudden, fresh-baked smell made her perk up.

Doe Eyes reached into his bag and handed her a braided, piping hot length of bread wrapped in paper, clearly having been bought on the street. "I thought you would be hungry, Kristy."

Shirley suddenly realized she  _ was  _ hungry. She was very hungry. She hadn't eaten in days. "Oh,  _ thank _ you!"

As she tore in, Doe Eyes rested his elbows on the table and drummed the surface with his fingertips. In the sunlight, he really was striking. He was slim and small-framed, a few inches shorter than her, in fact. But she could sense the wiriness within his body, and see corded muscles poke out from his biceps. Small men had an advantage in wartime, her father had used to tell her. Everyone underestimates a small man.

He had light, sunlit olive skin, and his freckles stood out around his nose like specks of red paint dotted there by a paintbrush. His hair was coming loose from its combed style in rebellious black curls. His hair was looser than her tight coils, in ringlets sleek and dark as coal. The tips brushed his stiff collar as he tilted his head to smile at her. 

He had such a wide smile. It was coy and dimpled his cheeks, crinkling the freckles around his nose. His face was round and boyish, chubby-cheeked--if she had asked his age, she probably wouldn't have guessed anything but a teenager. His eyelashes were long and dark, framing big, winsome black… doe eyes. 

But the deeper she looked into those eyes, they gave her pause. They watched her obsessively, tracking every movement with a empty sort of playfulness, like a kitten toying with a mouse. They had the blankness of an animal behind them, and the more they glittered, the more nervous she became.

"They're called  _ covrigi,"  _ he said, startling her from her thoughts. "They're a common street food. I love them. Wherever I go, I try to find them. But they're not very common outside Romania."

_ Romania _ . She was in Romania. She sat on the windowsill and looked out on the street. They were not in a good part of it. She saw trash piled up on the corners. The satellite dishes hung precariously from windows, and the walls were streaked and cracked with rot. Everything was gray--the concrete buildings, the street, and now, as stormclouds swooped in, the sky.

Shirley felt him sit beside her on the windowsill, and he wrapped his arm around her. "The rest of Bucharest is prettier than this. Maybe we will see it together." He tilted her chin with a fingertip, pursing his lips in a pouty smile.

Gracious, he acted like her  _ boyfriend _ . She wanted to be grateful to him--he treated her far better than the other two--but his affection made her nervous. "How was church?" She asked quickly.

"It was fine. The other two tried to talk me out of going, but I'm a good Christian. God's love is in every one of us. I like the church here… the people make me feel like one of their own." A strange sort of melancholy flashed across his face, but it was gone as quickly as it appeared.

God's...love? He was a strange one. For being an international mercenary, he seemed very genuine. "Church is… important," said Shirley. She didn't know what else to say. God hadn't been treating her well lately, and Shirley had stopped going to church entirely after her mother died.

Doe Eyes cupped her face. "God will guide you through this," he said. She tried to turn away, but he held her fast. His nose was an inch away from hers, dark eyes locked on hers. His breath spiralled warm over her face. "I can tell you're a woman of faith. Let us stay strong together." He rested his forehead against hers.

Shirley was hit by the impulse to flee, but there was nowhere to flee to. She was trapped like an animal.

"You know, Mrs. DeForge, you are so pretty on TV. I like to watch the preachers sometimes. Televangelists? You were interviewed by my favorite one, Pastor Joshua Ross. What a good, Christian woman you seemed! So beautiful and virtuous! No divorces, so dedicated to your husband! And so steadfast in your belief. What a shame you will never be First Lady, you would have been the envy of the world." He took a deep breath, as if he had been underwater, and then clasped her hands closer. His words were spilling out as if he had been keeping them locked up for a long time.

"I watched you every time you were on television. And then, when it came time to take you, I watched you myself for weeks and weeks, hidden at first one place and then the other. How my heart swelled for you, how I wanted to kiss your tears away! That cruel husband of your husband of yours, spurning you and leaving you on your lonesome, so unloved, in empty hotel rooms and rented houses!" He took her face and tried to kiss her, but she jerked away.

"How I wanted to meet you and share my faith with you," he whispered against her trembling lips. "How I wanted to comfort you in my own arms. And now… my dearest dream has come true!" 

He wrapped his arms around her, hugging her tightly. He smelled fresh, young, like pressed linen, and something about the smell reminded her of her old church. "May we pray together?"

She nodded, stiff with terror. He knelt on the ground with her, their foreheads still resting against each other. In his hands he had a beaded rosary loop with a crucifix on the end. His lips moved silently in prayer.

Shirley sat frozen, her heart beating so hard it thrummed in her ears.

If there was one thing that could rekindle her faith, it was the deep shit she was in now.

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is a little "sit down and get situated" (can't be action all the time I guess, LOL) Hopefully I'll upload the next chapter somewhat sooner. We're going to be stuck here in this apartment for the next few chapters.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shirley is met with a shock as she realizes that she will be here for far longer than she expects.

The days crept past, day and evening and night on the gray streets of Bucharest, inching agonizingly into weeks.

Shirley was becoming accustomed slowly to the men she lived with, as a rabbit becomes accustomed to the python in the cage next to it.

Doe Eyes was childlike, almost naive-- if she ignored the looming emptiness behind his eyes. He followed her around like a puppy, always wanting to talk to her and touch her and pray with her. His almost obsessive, childish attachment to her was barely enough to bear. He was a handsome young man, and had she seen him across the street she may have been drawn to him in a half-motherly way. But when his blank, dark-smudged eyes locked on hers and his face quirked in a wide smile, she could do nothing but look away. 

She mistrusted Doe Eyes, but she did not fear him in the way she did Fox. 

Fox… he disturbed her. Something about him made her whole body cold when he looked at her with those colorless eyes and smiled with those sharp teeth. He had an evil heart. If he could make her feel miserable, he would, whether it be a snide remark about her appearance, a hard pinch on the bottom, or an insult that struck deep into her heart. He seemed to love to bring up Buck. And he knew it bothered her. 

She had fallen asleep on the sofa once, and woken up with Fox's fingers inside her and his cock poking against her back. When she tried to scream, he clamped his hand over her mouth and laughed, his vodka-soaked breath washing over her face. He had rolled off of her, still laughing, and she made sure to never fall asleep anywhere but the bedroom again.

Shirley spent hours huddled in her bed, watching the door while Romania's lone streets stood stark and lamplit through the night. _It can't last forever,_ she reminded herself again and again. _Buck will come for me. These men are going to prison and I'll never have to see them again. I'll be home soon. I will..._

And one day, it seemed, her prayers were answered.

***

One day Blondie walked into her bedroom--something he rarely did--and tossed a dress at her. "Put your brookies on," he told her sharply. "We're going out."

She scrambled, putting it on--it was a type of dress she was used to wearing, high-end, with a straight hem that stopped just above her knees. It was navy, with billowed sleeves, and a belt cinched at the waist. It looked exactly like something a businesswoman would wear--a businesswoman named Kristy Macintyre who didn't exist.

Blondie gripped her by the arm and led her out of the apartment to a taxi. Both Fox and Doe Eyes were gone--she felt her heart thump. _Oh my god. I'm going back to America. Buck stepped down. He had to have. This is all over! I'm going home!_ She wanted to cry. She just wanted to kiss Blondie, she was so happy.

As they took the taxi to the city center, the scenery changed from faceless blank concrete buildings to magnificent centuries-old domed behemoths. Tall spires, grand arches and white-stained walls, antique architecture from Bucharest history. Cobblestones spanning the vast boulevards. People chatted, vendors plied their wares. The smell of car exhaust and street food reminded her of when she lived in New York, when Buck worked for the Bureau, and the memory made her smile.

Bucharest was fresh and airy that day, people walking briskly with their coats buttoned up to their necks. Some children were playing on the street, kicking a soccer ball around. Neither she nor Blondie, in their business casual attire, looked any different from the normal Romanian citygoer.

They stopped in the middle of a large square, in front of a sweeping, columned white building. A large statue of a man on a mounted horse cast a long shadow over the square. It was a grand square, vast and bright, and in any other circumstance she would have felt curiosity and wonder at its history. But she was so eager to be rid of her situation, it barely occurred to her.

Blondie pushed her onto a bench and sat beside her. She could tell he was hyper-vigilant--but in a subtle way, pretending to check his cell phone while his eyes darted here and there.

He gave off the air of a consummate professional, unlike the other two men. Among the three, he was clearly the leader. He was the one who handled the phone calls, passports, travel arrangements and other affairs. He was older, if not plainer than the other two, but made up for it with class. He dressed well, always snappily, in neatly-cut tweed suits like the one he wore now. His ivy-green tie was tucked neatly into his front.

The wind ruffled his neatly-combed golden hair as he tilted his head. He was thin-lipped, with a straight nose and a sharp, focused manner. He was bonier than Fox, in an almost gaunt way, but had a refinement in his mannerisms and the way he moved. He had a straight nose upon which a round pair of spectacles were perched, and light, straight blonde hair, half swept across his head and the other half combed back in a strangely old-fashioned style. 

He was older, but carried an air of elegance about him. He was fine-featured, almost aristocratically so in the line of his broad jaw and the tilt of his cheekbones, and handsome in a very mature way. His eyes were gray-green--analytical and cold, and she saw cruelty there, a more analytical kind, a kind to write off a whole platoon as _battle casualties._

He stiffened, his body going rigid against hers. A policeman was walking towards them, eyes fixed on them. Her heart leapt.

Blondie suddenly seized her jaw with his hand, and their lips met in a shock in a shock.

Both their eyes were open, and Shirley stared into his with shock; his cold green eyes darted away to eye the policeman from the corner of his eye. He gripped her arm tightly and pulled her into an embrace, tilting her head down so he could kiss her more passionately.

His lips were cold against hers, fingers entangling in her curls as he forced her mouth against his. His tongue flattened hers, muffling her protests. She tasted the sour grape of his lollipops on his tongue.

She had never been kissed like this before. Her hand stopped trying to push him away, settling on his tweed-clad shoulder. The fabric was coarse under her fingers.

He was so close, and so forceful. His unrestrained passion made her lips slack and her face flush. _Buck never kissed me like this. He never…_

Blondie pulled away suddenly, mouth freeing from hers in a loss of warmth. The sunlight glinted off his glasses. The policeman had lost interest in the kissing couple--if even he'd had interest in them in the first place--and had moved on past them.

She pulled her up suddenly in a jerk, and hurried her down into the bustling Bucharest crowd. Still reeling, Shirley tottered after him.

Shirley's heart was in her throat as he led her into a side street. Her lips tingled. His arm clutched hers tightly, walking so briskly she wobbled on her heels. A street performer made balloon animals for a crowd of squealing children.

That kiss… it almost frightened her with how intense it was. She raised her hand to shakily touch her lips.

People shoved past and chatted and pushed them away. Until--

A man had fallen into step beside them, matching them step by step in the roiling crowd. "Look at me," he said sharply from beside her. Shirley turned her head in surprise. 

The stranger was dressed in a coat and slacks, and his sunglasses, coat and had obscured his features. All she could make out was a hard, downturned mouth and a few bristles of mustache above his upper lip.

She could tell he was studying her intently from behind his sunglasses. Blondie spoke up, his English-but-not-quite-English accent crisp. "She's being well taken care of. We have her on the far north side of Bucharest. She has no way to contact anyone."

Apparently satisfied, the man in the sunglasses nodded. He turned again so that he faced the street in front of them. For all the world, they looked like a couple of city dwellers who happened to be walking side by side through the crowd.

"Buck DeForge has not responded to our demands."

"What?" Blondie and Shirley spoke up at the same time, Blondie incredulous and Shirley in terror.

"We have reissued our demands. Buck Deforge is still giving speeches, fundraising and campaigning--sans his wife."

Blondie swore under his breath. Shirley gave his arm a sudden yank, trying to pull away, mindless with terror that she would be forced to return to that concrete hell. Blondie twisted her arm back, so tight that it erupted with bone-searing pain. "Bloody hell. What do you want us to do, then?"

"Keep her where she is. You might be expected to take off at any point if they get wind of where you are. You will all be compensated accordingly."

And then the man fell out of step from them and vanished into the crowd.

***

It was a hot day, but Shirley's teeth were chattering the whole way back to the apartment building.

Fox was sitting, shirt off in the heat of the apartment. Sweat trickled down his biceps as he looked up them with cold gray eyes. "It has been about time. Are we off this assignment, then?"

Doe Eyes was intently watching television from the sofa, but she could tell he was listening. Blondie sighed heavily and threw his coat over the sofa. 

"I'm afraid we're going to be staying indefinitely. DeForge hasn't responded."

Fox spat a word in a different language that by its vitriol she could tell was a curse. "I cannot stay here. I have other places I need to be. Other jobs I need to do. I am not keeping my clients waiting while I sit here in this concrete shithole and twiddle my thumbs. I cannot stand these fucking apartment blocks. I grew up in one one and I could go a _long_ time before I see one again!"

"I have my own engagements as well," Blondie said tersely, taking out a peeling can of soup from the cabinet. "However, this is a mission of utmost importance. And we are being _very_ well compensated. So sit down and keep your bloody trap shut."

"Maybe Buck didn't get the ransom letter," Shirley blabbered, heart pounding. She felt small and terrified in this room of men, even more so when their eyes turned on her. "Buck is so busy, and his secretary, she's a new hire, she's so incompetent she probably threw it out or deleted it or--or--"

"You have too much faith in your husband." Blondie rolled his eyes. "Wives always do."

The cynicism in those simple words made her heart want to die. _It's not true. Buck would never do that._

Fox sat forward. The bulging muscles of his arms and pectorals were on full display, hard as a rock. His hair was damp with sweat, clinging to his shoulders. He gave her a nasty smile and spread his legs, revealing a hard lump under his jeans.

He held out an arm for her, and after a terrified moment, she cautiously approached him. He yanked her onto his lap in one movement.

The dark-haired man's strong hands slid down her arms, down her waist, and onto her legs, then up her dress to knead her trembling thighs. Between her legs, where her hem had ridden up, his erection was pressed so that its head ground right against her hole. It was rock-hard and pulsing even through the layers of cloth, and although she began to squirm, the iron grip of his hands on her legs kept her right in place.

"If he keeps ignoring us," said Fox, "Then we might have to make it clear that something will… happen to you."

Shirley's tears blurred hot and horrified as she felt him grin against her shoulder. He dragged his fang across his lower lip. 

"Maybe I will make some extra money off you, huh? Whore you out? Have some men come in and take turns with you?"

Her entire body was taut and arched, trembling with terror. Hot tears blurred her eyes, but her jaw was locked shut as his hand climbed _higher--_

Doe Eyes was still staring at the television. He was not looking in their direction.

Blondie kicked Fox's leg. "Let her go. We will not do anything of the sort. We are not going to compromise her value. She's already going to write a memoir about this. Don't give her more fodder for them to hunt us down."

Fox reluctantly loosened his grip, and Shirley stumbled off. She yanked the hem of her dress down.

"The soup is boiling," said Blondie. "Chop some vegetables and keep an eye on it, _Kristy._ I have phone calls to make."

***

That night, Shirley let her breaths slow and still. She lay frozen next to Doe Eyes until his breath rhythm matched hers.

She slowly, agonizingly, reached out a leg over the edge of the bed. His breaths sped up. She stilled. 

Inch by inch, she slid out of the bed. She kept her father's slow, deep snores in mind. As a soldier, he had woken at the creak of the smallest toe. Shirley had learned to be very quiet from a very young age as she searched for Christmas presents.

Doe Eyes' lashes were still and dark.

Shirley slowly turned the iron doorknob. It gave an alarming creak, and Doe Eyes rolled over. Her heart jumped to her lungs. She silently twisted it the rest of the way and emerged into the darkened room. The TV was fuzzy with static. The silence weighed on her as she tiptoed to the kitchen area and riffled through as quietly as she could manage until she pulled out an iron knife.

The brass doorknob glinted dully in the light from the TV. Shirley pressed the edge of the knife beneath the metal plaque fixing the doorknob to the wall. She jimmied it back and forth, the metal slipping in her clammy palms. She dug it under the rusty nail, taking the time to glance over her shoulder at the empty room. Her heart pounded.

One rusty nail came off and rolled onto the floor.

_Please Jesus. Get me out of here._

Another came off. She was fully focused, straining at the thought of sweet freedom, just _barely_ beyond her reach. Just two more. Two more. Two more, and she could poke her knife through to dislodge the lock on the other side. And and one was already coming loose, it was wriggling--

"What are you doing." The words were not a question.

The voice was quiet, rising barely above the static of the TV. Shirley twisted the knife and yanked it out, pressing her back to the door to face Blondie.

He was standing, still as a statue in his suit. The light of the television spiked gray and white off the faded tweed. She could not read his eyes, for the dark glow turning his glasses frames into dull blocks of blue.

Shirley did not know how long he had been standing there. She had not heard him come in. Perhaps he had been there the whole time.

She gripped the knife behind her back, wrists shaking.

"Who are you people?" Shirley whispered.

He tilted his head, and the glare on his glasses shifted to let his dull green eyes bore into her. 

"We are men who are doing a job," he said calmly. "No less, no more." 

"You're a bunch of criminals," she said, voice cracking.

"Well done, Mrs. DeForge," he said dryly. He took a step forward, clearly losing his patience, only to go still as she took the knife out from behind her back.

Shirley stared down the blade at him, pointed right at his face. Her entire being was trembling like a taut string. Sweat trickled down her thighs, and terror nausea surged in her throat, but she kept her face hard and blank.

"You've killed people, haven't you?" She said. "All three of you. It's what you do."

Blondie did not take away his eyes from hers, even to look at the knife. Those green irises bored into hers, the color of snake venom. "Who's the hypocrite now? Your husband is running for President of the United States. At least I do my killing face to face."

His voice was soft, barely audible over the static of the TV. Her trembling was becoming worse, and the knife wobbled in her hand.

"People will be looking for me," she said lowly. "Not just my husband. The longer you keep me, the more people will notice, and--"

Blondie gave a humorless laugh. "Do you have any friends, Mrs. DeForge? Campaign aids, certainly. Maybe even a secretary. But how often do you have 'brunch' with your girlfriends? Go on namby pamby shopping trips and complain about your husband? Talk about the benefits of cloth diapers versus disposable, or whatever the bloody hell modern women do in their spare time? Because it looks to me… is all you do is follow your husband around, and parrot whatever his issue of the week is."

Anger and a sudden, wrenching sadness rose up alongside the nausea. She gritted her teeth and ignored the sadness. "I'm going to run," she swore. "And you're going to have to deal with that. Whatever chance I get. I'm not going to just meekly accept this. I, I--"

"And I don't blame you for that," Blondie said conversationally. "Now, Mrs. DeForge, I'm not like that drunk snoring back there. I'm not going to get angry if you try to slip your chains. You're in a bad situation and you want to get out. It's just human. However…"

The pause turned each second longer and longer, until her arm was screaming in pain from holding the knife up. Her fear eclipsed her anger as the moments ticked past, until when he finally spoke again, she was nearly sobbing.

"All the same, it is my job to prevent you from doing so. You are worth a very large retirement check to me, Mrs. DeForge. A very, very large one. Suffice to say when this is all over, I will never have to work again."

The door was cold and hard against her back. Blondie spoke his last words with an offhanded, mild irritation. "Therefore, if I find it to be necessary, I will break your ankles. I will twist them backward until the bone shards break your skin, and I will _ensure_ you they stay broken during the entirety of our time together. In fact, I can do it right here, right now. Now, _Shirley."_ His voice dropped its irritation and became black with humorlessness. 

"Will you drop your knife, or do we need a demonstration?"

The knife clattered to the floor, and then her sobs _were_ coming out, loud and heavy, heaving her chest so hard she could barely breathe.

Blondie picked up the knife, gave it a cursory clean with a dishcloth on the chair, and set it down. He stiffly offered her his arm, and she forced herself to take it, still crying

He escorted her to her bedroom. "Quiet down. You're embarrassing yourself." He took out his handkerchief and wiped her face.

Being so close to him made her stiffen. He was drab, an older blond man whom she wouldn't have thought twice of had she saw him reading the paper on the subway. But beneath those neatly tailored clothes she could sense mercilessness, a dark, silent sort that made her realize he was capable of very, very bad things. She saw the tip of a scar lick beneath one ear, half-hidden behind his glasses as he turned to face her fully.

With another, sharper sense of fear, she still remembered the forceful way he had kissed her earlier that day, and wondered if he had truly wanted to do it, or if he really had done it as a distraction. By the dark, unreadable look in his green eyes, she couldn't tell.

"Off to bed with you," he said crisply, letting her go and pushing her towards the door, and she hurriedly darted inside her bedroom, scratching her arm where he had been holding her. She locked the door securely after her.

Doe Eyes was sitting up in bed, legs crossed and chin resting on one hand. 

"Did you learn your lesson?" He asked, eyes bright and alert and perfectly awake

Shirley sat down slowly on the bed, her back to him. She said nothing. After several minutes, he lay down beside her. She could not tell when or even if he drifted off, but she stayed awake until the dawn tinged the dull concrete tops of the buildings outside the window. And even then, she did not sleep easy.

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the wait, I have a crappy cold and it's been a little busy lately lol. Anyway, things are going to heat up next chapter… a lot. 😬


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tensions come to a breaking point with no end in sight.

When Shirley had first started to teeter on the brink of loneliness, she lived in New York. It had been three years after she married Buck, and the giddiness of their honeymoon had long worn off. Buck worked for the Bureau, and the Javits Center was a long drive from their apartment. Shirley did clerical work in an office building on Times Square, a building almost as far away from the Javits Center as their apartment was.

Shirley would often take her break and file into a hole-in-the-wall soup shop in Times Square. She would cup her plastic bowl of potato soup (always potato soup, with a dollop of sour cream on top) and carry it over to one of the concrete benches lining the cold stone of Times Square. She would cup the warm styrofoam in her cold hands, her breaths escaping in puffs of white clouds, fold her legs under her, and people-watch.

The distant skyscrapers jutted against the clear white sky. She smelled cooking sausage from the hot dog vendors. Glittering billboards flashed yellow and green and red. The bright neon reflected off the snow-slicked sidewalk.

People bustled by--clamoring tourists with their cameras hung around their neck, snappily-dressed businessmen and women on their way to Wall Street, and the sparse scattering of panhandlers who drudged around, looking for a dollar bill from a sympathetic tourist. Shirley sat in the middle and ate her soup with her fragile plastic spoon. She watched. She thought.

Her cell phone went off several times a day, a sharp ringing piercing her ears. This time, the blocky black numbers spelled her mother's telephone number.

_"Hi, Mama."_

_"Hi, baby."_ Mama's tone made ice set into her limbs. That wonderful, gentle voice, but with a hopeless behind it. A hopelessness she had never heard before. One that made something deep and childlike erupt inside her.

 _"Baby… there's something I have to tell you. I went to the hospital on Tuesday."_ She paused _. "The cancer. It's metastasized."_

The cold air against her face chilled against the hot sweat condensation on her cheeks. Cold and hot. Cold and hot.

Her mind was a thousand miles above. "What?" She said, her throat clammy. And her sobs came instinctively, distantly.

_"There's still a chance. Aunt Gracey hung on for a few years, and she was in final stage. It's not the end, baby, I promise--"_

The rest of their conversation went like a whirlwind, between sobs and comforts and hurried explanations. 

Shirley didn't want to end the call. She felt as if once they disconnected, Mama would be gone forever.

The cold wind stung her wet cheeks. She looked at the plastic green screen of her phone, then dialed Buck, her fingertip skidding over the buttons.

_"Hello?"_

She furiously wiped her eyes. "Buck, I--"

 _"Honey!"_ His voice was excited. _"You'll never guess what happened!"_

Buck hadn't sounded this excited in months. He sounded _happy--_ the sort of happy that she had not heard since their wedding.

She swallowed. "What is it?"

 _"Kerry promoted me! I'm assistant head director now! This is going to be amazing for my political career! All this time, I never thought I'd manage it!"_ His voice was breathless with excitement.

Shirley stared into the gray mound of slush at the base of the bench leg. She heard the static echo in her ear, her face blank.

"Wow, congrats, honey! I'm so proud of you!" She trained her shaking voice into false congratulation. He didn't notice. _"Couldn't have done it without you in my corner, Shirl."_

Not wishing to ruin his mood, she forced a smile. "I knew you'd do it, Buck. All the overtime, everything. You've got what it takes. I love you."

 _"Love you too, Shirl."_ He hung up.

Shirley listened to the dial tone for a long time, then hung up. She took another bite of potato soup, and it tasted like nothing.

She threw it away in the nearest trashcan and walked into her office building. She stood in he crowded elevator, towards the back, head down and staring at the tiles. She wanted to cry to someone, anyone, but just tucked herself away.

***

As days and nights passed in a blur. (Weeks? _Months_?) She had started keeping a tally scratched into the wall with a paperclip but gave up after it made her think of being in prison.

Shirley was not allowed to leave the apartment. Out of anything to do, she cooked and cleaned, feeling like nothing more than a housewife, especially with the wandering hands of her Fox that occasionally pressed or squeezed her as she stood at the stove. Her dye job had become lank and discolored as it washed out. Her perfect manicure was cracked and broken. As a woman who had become used to the most exclusive beauty salons and the most expensive hair dressers available--it ground on her. It reminded her of those days before Buck got into politics--those days in New York where the bitter taste of poverty was constantly on the back of her tongue. _I swore I'd never live those days again._

She could sense a tension between the three men, a tension steadily boiling like a kettle about to burst. Their nerves were fraying, making them snap at each other. Fox spent so much time drinking that it bothered Blondie. Doe Eyes went to church too often--which bothered Fox. Doe Eyes was a favorite target of mockery for Fox, but the younger man rarely responded. Doe Eyes treated Fox as he did everyone--with an airheaded pleasantness. He seemed unbothered by practically everything, a quality which Shirley had to admit, she was jealous of. But she could tell it annoyed Fox. Shirley just tried to stay out of their way as much as possible. 

They were all too close, too cooped up. And for men used to traveling the world, being squashed and imprisoned like this was a nightmare for them.

Hot sweat and masculine bickerings were always in the air.. Chests bared and pants unbuckled. The scent of man was thick in the apartment, a heady sweat that made her thighs clench. They bumped into each other in the small apartment, hands brushing her bottom and, shoulders, elbows digging into her breasts. Especially Fox. He has a disturbing, vicious lust to him, like a panther stalking a female in heat.

Bucharest had a chaotic energy, but their district was drudgery. There was nothing but gray beyond her window. It was raining that day, the smell of their apartment rising damp and musty in the air. The radiator dripped loudly in the corner. The wavering television showed an old I Love Lucy rerun, which Doe Eyes was fixated on. 

Shirley and Doe Eyes were on the ripped, overstuffed sofa, Doe Eyes' arm slung over the back to linger an inch from her shoulders. He always sat a little too close to her.

Lucy and Desi were getting up to shenanigans. Desi was wearing pyjamas and stumbling around the kitchen while Lucy laughed good-naturedly with Ethel. Then he was singing at a club. Then he was being a bumbling husband again.

"Shir-ley, you remind me of Lucy," cooed Doe Eyes. "Do I remind you of Desi?" 

She looked at him, with his round eyes, his chubby face and scattered freckles. "Sure you do," she lied.

He seemed mollified, and leaned over to hug her. "You are funny and sweet like Lucy. I am happy and clumsy like Desi."

Shirley heard sharp voices outside the door. Blondie and Fox. They were lifting and falling, speaking rapidly in a different language. She strained her ears, trying not to flinch when Doe Eyes put his head on her shoulder.

Their voices devolved into heavily arguing English. "--can't stay here for fucking forever! Who cares if that--" he said a word in another language that sounded like _karm zada_ _\-- "_ can't be fucked to pay for his own wife?"

"I know you're getting sick of staying in this place. But there are many other places we can go. You need to look at the bigger picture--"

"I'm not babysitting this broad for months and months. I'm sick of this apartment, sick of Bucharest, sick of living with that simpleton back there watching television with his pretend wife. I need to be in a war zone already. Not cramped in a dingy apartment twiddling my thumbs!"

Fox's voice rose to a shout as Shirley looked back over her shoulder. His accent was slipping, and she couldn't make out the rest of his threats. He swore more than anyone she'd ever heard, except for perhaps her grandmother.

The door suddenly slammed open and Fox strode through. His broad shoulders barely fit through the doorway. He gave her a long, hard glare that made a shiver run down her back, and left the room.

Doe Eyes kissed her neck, wet lips pricking her skin before she edged away. 

Blondie looked harried and stressed as he locked the door behind him. "Miss DeForge. get the pot roast out." His voice was tense and strained.

Fox was long gone before dinner was ready, gone to who knows where in Bucharest. They had dinner tersely, the silence stewing like she was back living with Buck, in their apartment in New York City, with an emptiness in her belly and a meekness in her mind as she faced her husband across the dining table.

Blondie and Doe Eyes left soon after they had all eaten dinner, making sure to lock her securely inside. Alone for the first time, she spent another fruitless hour trying to levy the door open. It had now been replaced by a hard drilled iron plaque, soldered in the place she had been wearing grooves in the wood. 

Shirley gave up and and roamed around to recheck the windows. All were set in solid iron, and completely unbreakable. They had pulled out the stops to keep her captive. She even stared at the toilet for a while, contemplating whether she could unscrew it and crawl beneath the sewer pipes, like Frank Abagnale had. She dismissed the prospect out of fear and disgust.

A siren whined in the distance. Shirley collapsed on the bed, exhausted. Her hands hurt from trying to jimmy the door open. She felt cold and alone. The reality of her situation had sunk in weeks ago, yet this new revelation made her panic flare up, before fading into something like the acceptance of a man facing his execution. 

Shirley was somewhat of a submissive woman. She had agreed to marry Buck the first time he asked. She had agreed to her father's demands that she attend a certain college, pursue a certain major. She had lived in New York City in a cluttered apartment with intermittent electricity, saying nothing, while Buck fetched coffee for Bureau bigwigs and pursued his political ambitions. This was no different. She could wait it out. She _would_ wait it out. If they didn't hurt her, if they _just_ kept her hands off her...

 _Joseph was held in solitude for thirteen years,_ she reminded herself, falling back on her old Bible stories. _And he never lost hope. If he can do it, I can do it._

***

Shirley woke that night to an eyeful of darkness and a hand pressing against her cheek. "Are you awake, sugar cup?" Fox's clumsy attempt at an English endearment was slurred and accented. He had been drinking, and she could tell by the way his lips tasted when he forced them on her. The bitter alcohol seeped into her throat.

"Get up," Fox told her, pulling her up by her arm. Shirley followed him into the hallway on shaky legs. From behind, his hair was pitch-black and long enough to brush his shoulders. She could see the outlines of muscles beneath his sweat-soaked shirt.

He sat down heavily at the table. There was a glass bottle sitting there, filled with clear liquid, and beside it, two half-empty shot glasses. He downed one. 

She slowly sat down opposite him. He was wearing a sleeveless black shirt, and beaten-up looking jeans. He licked the droplets of vodka still on his lips, and gave her a smile.

That smile. It made he want to bolt and run. The way it lifted at the edges, showing the tips of his eyeteeth. Fox was sharply handsome, with angular features, combining the coyness of a Siamese cat with all the joy from the cat torturing a bird. His face was sculpted and sharp, high-cheekboned, with eyes that tilted upward at the edges, giving him a sly look like a fox. His hair was pitch-black and hung to his cheekbones, but was longer in the back, just enough to cover his nape. His eyes were paler than ice, a light gray that was almost colorless and filled with cold shards of cruelty.

"Where are the rest of the men? That nancy prick with a stick up his ass and that… kid? Whatever he is. He gives me the creeps. He looks like he watches Sesame Street in the morning."

"They--left." Shirley had no desire to talk with Fox more than she needed to.

"And left you all alone? Fucking mo-rons. I bet they're out blowing their bosses and whinging for an apology. Neither of them have any balls."

He tipped more vodka into the glass and bottomed up. A trickle of sweat made its way down his throat.

The lightbulb flickered. His body was hard and huge, his arms thick as iron bars. They could wrap around her throat so easily. 

"I can't stand these bitches. Hookers in Eastern Europe… fucking groping, skinny, greedy sluts… makes me want to go back to Milwaukee. The roadside hookers would at least give you a half decent blowjob for a huff of crack. They knew their worth. Fucking cunts here think they're all that…"

He was ranting, not to her, to the air. She was just a prop. 

"You lived in Wisconsin?" Her voice was small, but had a welcoming tinge, a leftover from being interviewed over and over.

He seemed to comprehend that he was giving away far too much, and he snapped shut.

"Let's play a game." He was loud, and his voice didn't leave any room for arguments. He tipped the bottle over and filled both shot glasses. 

"I don't drink," she whispered.

"You do now. Neither of those other prudes drink. I can't have any fun with them." His eyes flashed with an unsaid threat.

He handed her a shot and gripped her arm in his. Around her arm, he picked up his glass **.** "Drink up." With his other arm he tweaked one of her long blonde curls, pulling it out slowly then letting it bounce back with a smile on his face. She repressed a shudder.

Shirley pinched the shot between her fingers as Fox downed his. The sour scent of vodka rose to her nose, and she coughed.

His eyes sparked pale and cruel in the dim light.

She lifted her shot and forced herself to take a sip. It immediately rose to her throat, snd she coughed.

"No, no, no. You're supposed to chug it. Here." He poured himself another shot and downed it. 

Shirley squeezed her eyes shut and emptied her shot into her mouth. The bitter taste nearly made her vomit. 

***

Her head was swimming. His arm was hard and strong in hers. She could feel the alcohol fermenting in her belly, churning and sickening. Saliva filled her mouth as her stomach roiled, and she swallowed, trying hard not to vomit.

The planes of his face seemed oddly sharp and calculating even as his voice descended into slurriness. "You're so cute. I bet that sniveling politician husband of yours doesn't give you his cock too often, does he?"

She thought about Conna, suddenly. The way they spent so much time in his office. The way her brown coiffed hair was in disarray whenever she exited his office.

No. Shirley was imagining it. 

Shirley tried to yank her arm free, but his strong arm clenched around hers. He yanked her forward, the hard and sharp features of his face chiseled like daggers as he faced her.

"You don't just stop believing in God. It comes over a long period of time. Did I lose faith in God when shrapnel tore my best friend's face off in front of me? Did I lose faith in God when I gutted a man with a handknife for the first time? I slit him from throat to cock and watched while he squirmed and his insides bubbled and flowed out onto the ground. Took him a long time to die, and I was there for every… moment… of… it."

Her wrist was trembling under his rock-hard grip. She had never heard such pure, seething emotion before, not even in the soldiers that her father had dishonorably discharged.

With a slow creak of his chair, Fox leaned forward until his breath washed over her parted lips, frozen in a silent whimper of fear.

"What do you think about that, Shirley? I bet your pearl clutching little upper class American sensibilities would be just so _horrified._ " His voice was pure hate. His eyes were cold and dead as ice. The flickering lightbulb lit them up like flashes of gunmetal.

Her thighs were quivering, and her legs felt like water. "I don't," she whispered, "I didn't know--"

"You're so sweet on television. So coy. Like that kid says--so _virginal and holy."_ His voice was straining as he stood up, his back clattering the chair behind him.

His bulk blocked out the night of the window behind him.

"You know that your fucking God is nothing but an imaginary ghost in the sky?"

In her mind, Shirley began to pray.

***

Her thighs were sticking to each other, peeling and damp against her warm skin.

The black-haired man pulled her toward him, despite her feeble attempts to fend him off. Her first blow was met with a yank on her arm so brutal it went numb.

Fox brutally slammed her against his body and sucked her into a vicious kiss. There was nothing gentle or romantic in that kiss, nor any particular affection. He kissed her like he hated her, like he wanted to eat her alive.

His lips bruised hers as he forced his tongue against the back of her throat, thrusting steadily just as his cock ached to do pressed against her thigh. 

_God who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name._ Shirley prayed fervently in her mind. She willed herself miles away. She was not here. She was on the campaign trail. She was in a hotel room, waiting for Buck to come in and throw his coat down and _finally_ take her in his arms.

She wasn't being slammed against a ratty sofa between the straining hot body of a brutal man who would kill her without batting an eye. An eye as cold and pale as a shard of ice, devoid of empathy, just hatred and darkness.

His muscled arms held her down cruelly as she pleaded, voice going high and hoarse with panic. His strong thighs held her legs apart as he pulled his jeans down beneath his waist. His hips dug into hers, weighing heavy as iron. He pulled her pants down to her ankles and shoved her shirt up for boorish access to her breasts. His cock was erect, the veins pulsing around it as it strained towards her bare pussy.

The warmth of his cockhead nearly made her collapse. It was so much bigger than she had expected… not even when he had forced himself on her in the airplane bathroom had it felt half as huge. The rawness of his bare cock tensed against her slick lips, then penetrated deep into her body. He bit her nipple hard, his sharp teeth making blood well in punctures.

His length seared her, filled her painfully, and his hot vodka-soaked breath washed over her as he gripped the back of her hair and forced her into another brutal kiss.

The heat, the hugeness of his cock stretching out her inner walls, his vodka-soaked breath against her ear… her head was spinning, she was overstimulated. The torn roughness of the sofa behind her dragged against her bare back.

Her gag reflex was working, pure alcohol searing her throat as she tried to keep it down, but eventually it spewed out in between the horror and pain and misery. Sour smelling puke streamed down her face as she vomited, Fox's face an inch away from hers. His face bared in a grin as she started to sob.

His cock pulsed hotly inside her. Each steady thrust ground his body against her, his muscles tensing against her soft body. Her mind spun into nothingness as he slammed himself into her again and again, his cock dragging wetness out of her and forcing it back in.

Her limbs were numb. His black hair hung to shield his face as he stilled, holding her down against the ratty sofa with a grip of iron. 

She slid her leg up his sweat-soaked side to try and force him away, only to hook around his neck as his cock hit a button inside her that made warmth wash over her belly.

When her pussy wasn't filled with his cock it spasmed for what wasn't there, before relaxing as the swollen, rock hard length filled her again. The lip of his cock pressed against the door to her womb, making a flare of pain erupt among the mindless pleasure.

Then he rammed himself further, and it _hurt._ She tasted the vomit and vodka in her mouth, she felt her back ache as he bent her over the sofa, and his huge cock was forcing her open so hard it made her body explode in pain. 

She wriggled back, trying to lash out with her legs, but he was weighing on her so _heavy,_ and her gripped her chin to meet his icy eyes, still smiling with his teeth bared, still thrusting _brutally--_

And his hips tensed, and the rush of semen hit her swollen insides in a wash of heat. The wetness spilled past the pulsing sides of his cock to drip down her quivering thighs.

Footsteps outside the door had just begun to echo. Fox froze just as the door swung open. He thrust himself away and Shirley closed her legs, and they were covering themselves up just as the other eyes found them.

***

"What did you do?" Said Blondie immediately. His eyes were alert and becoming slowly angry as Fox buttoned his fly. " _What did you do to?"_

Fox was spreading his hands, smiling that ghoulish smile. "She wanted it. She climbed all over me. Her pussy was all wet--"

Blondie took one look at her, heaving with sobs and vomit-stained, and his face turned into livid stone.

He took a step forward and pushed Fox backward, his entire body tense and trembling with fury. "You bloody idiot. You've jeopardized everything. _Everything."_ His voice was building into a shout.

He stepped toward her, pulled her shirt down and her pants up. "Go and clean yourself up," he told her coldly and dismissively. She stumbled toward the bathroom door and shut it tight behind her, then collapsed on the floor.

Shirley let herself sob a few times, big heaving wails like a baby, but forced herself to stop. She sat up and wet a rag under the faucet, and cleaned the caked vomit off her face and chest. Then her eyes wandered down, between the bruised and bloodied apex of her thighs.

Shirley was not on birth control, and the thought of bearing that rapist brute's child made her kick into high panic. _Oh dear god. Please in heaven, spare me from this, if anything, just this one thing!_

She wet another rag and began to hurriedly scrub his seed out of her. She scraped every bit of wetness out between her legs, even the seeps of pleasure she had experienced. The searing pain from his cock forcefully tearing inside her made her throat spasm again. She leaned her forehead against the cool ceramic of the sink, hand relaxed between her throbbing thighs as she dimly listened to the argument going on outside.

_"You useless drunk. You think this is a game? What post Soviet shithole did you come from to think this is acceptable? Do you know how much damage control--"_

_"Her fucking husband isn't even paying up. We should show him what's going to happen if he keeps fucking around--" Fox's voice was a brutal growl as his heavy footstep slammed forward._

She heard the click of a gun. And Blondie's voice go very soft. " _You had better get out of here. I'm going to take your… unprofessionalism up with our employers. Christ willing you'll never get another job again, you bloody brute. Especially not with me."_

Shirley heard a pause, then the door slam, and heavy bootsteps clomp down the apartment stairs. She gave herself another wash and slid on her pants again. Even the cloth of the pants hurt when it brushed between her legs.

When she came out, Blondie was standing in the living room, face set and furious. He didn't relax when he saw her. "Look at you. Clean yourself up," he snapped. He forcefully yanked the bosom of her blouse shut against her bare breasts. His knuckles brushed her soft skin, one touching her ripe pink nipple. 

Ready to collapse from the pain, Shirley leaned against him, pressing her forehead against his shoulder. Tears soaked into the tweed, and she felt him pause. She stared at him from the corner of her eye. His eyes were completely unreadable as he stared down at her half-naked body.

His fingers dug into her arms as his dark eyes lingered past her white breasts down to the apex of her bloodstained thighs, which clenched close as his eyes bore deeper. Something taboo and heady seemed to rise to his faded green eyes as his thumb slowly began to rub her shoulder.

That was when it struck her.

He was looking at her like a _man_ , she realized--not as a soldier, an employee, or whatever he believed himself to be. 

He abruptly pulled away, just as she lurched away from him with just as much force. He smoothed his blond hair back into its immaculate side part. Blondie fastened the last button of her blouse and pushed her away. "Stop crying," He said sharply. "Stop crying, already. Go on and sleep. We have a flight to catch tomorrow."

A soft hand caught her elbow. She realized with a jolt it was Doe Eyes--she had not even noticed him.

Doe Eyes gently led her to her bedroom. He had seemed to be hovering in the background, an impartial shadow while Blondie and Fox had their showdown--but his eyes were always on her.

Shirley was a wreck, legs trembling as a fresh stream of blood made its way down her thighs. Her throat burned from the vomit. Doe Eyes embodied his name as he helped her into bed, pupils soft and liquid and so _gentle._ "Ssh. That's right. It's all over." His voice was gentle and soft, and she took a bare kind of comfort from it. "I'm so sorry what happened to you. What an awful thing he has done." His voice was comforting, but he didn't sound very upset about it. 

She leaned against him, her brain blank and chest still heaving with unshed sobs. She felt suddenly comforted by him, by his smell and voice, in a way she had only taken comfort from her husband.

"It hurt. It--" her perfect politician's wife facade was cracking. She clutched him, and he held her in his arms comfortingly. "I feel…" _violated, turned inside out, like nothing will ever be the same._ "Like Buck would--"

"Sssh. You fought him, right? That means you're still holy. You weren't unfaithful." His voice was sympathetic, but sing-song.

In the dim light from beneath the door, his face was feline, eyes darting dark. But his voice was so comforting. She curled up beneath the covers, and he curled around her. His breath was warm, not hot, against her ear.

"I'll make you feel better, my lady."

His finger dug between her cleft and rested there, above her pulsing clit. 

Her back arched suddenly as he kissed her nape. His fingers delved deeper, expertly pinpointing places that made her squirm. His body was pressed against hers, arms embracing her until she couldn't move. His dark curls brushed her skin. 

He stroked her lightly, the soft pads of his fingers digging and rubbing before his head ducked under the covers.

The slide of his wet, rough tongue against her slit made her whine. Her heartbeat was thumping against her ears as he dragged his tongue over her torn lips, the blood bleeding onto the surface of his tongue.

"St-stop…" her voice was small as he devoured her, eating greedily between her thighs as his mouth brought her to a shaky climax. 

She took no pleasure from the lust that burned like a bonfire deep in her belly. Her clit twitched under his mouth, her breath shortened, his tongue dug into her wet red insides, flattening on her clit and drawing out the arousal that she had tried to suppress.

Her neck arched back, gripping his dark curls. They brushed her thighs, so soft, tickling her skin as she fruitlessly tried to yank them away. 

Her legs clenched against her will as a spasm of pleasure hit them, trapping his head between her thighs. She felt him smile softly against the inside of her leg, right where it met her mound, and he gave it a small kiss that made her shiver.

When he pulled his head away she was a quivering mess. Self hatred, nausea and shaky pleasure had overcome her body, and as Doe Eyes took her in his warm arms, she lashed out.

"You're not my husband. You're just some stranger. I don't know you. Stop _touching_ me. Stop. Please leave me alone! You're all monsters, every one of you! You're crazy!" Her voice snapped at her last word. She turned away to hide her breaking face.

Doe Eyes' arms stiffened around her, then he stilled completely. She felt his body still as ice around her, his soft, deep breaths washing over her ear. 

In the dim light filtering from under the door, she could see the impassive line of his mouth and his dark curls falling to shield his eyes.

He turned around coldly and put his head against the pillow. He remained still as she curled up on the other side of the bed, and she could feel the sharp hurt coming from him, like a wounded little boy… but with something darker beneath, something she could not name.

Shirley tried to sleep in that cold room, next to that man, hearing the traffic outside and the radiator hum and drip while her insides burned with pleasure and pain.

She crawled off the bed eventually, and curled up on the floor carpet. She smelled the must of the carpet, heard and felt the alien sensations of Bucharest, and all she could think of was the ranch house, and her mother's room, and the quilt she had crawled under next to her dying Mama.

Shirley didn't want Buck anymore. She just wanted her mother.

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter sure was nasty 😥 apologies. Poor Shirley. And we all know this is just the beginning 😬


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shirley and her captors leave cold Bucharest for the hot deserts of Morocco. Blondie and Shirley have a battle of wills.

The next morning was cold and bright. When Shirley woke up, Doe Eyes was lying beside her, staring fixedly at her. She didn't know how long he had been awake, or if he had been watching her the whole night. As soon as she woke he got up, dressed silently and left the room.

An hour later, Blondie came in and barked at her to get up where she was curled up on the bed, hugging herself. He tossed her a short brown wig, a white blouse and black dress pants, and told her to _get dressed we're leaving in an hour._

Shirley hurt between her legs every time she took a step. Her scalp hurt when she stuffed her blonde curls under the too-small wig. She hurt when she tried to remember last night.

She just _hurt._ She wanted to go home.

Blondie was waiting outside her room with two white pills, which she resigned herself to taking. Doe Eyes was on the sofa and refusing to look at her. Fox was smoking like a chimney, sitting at the table, but his pale gray eyes were fixated on her with a terrifying intensity. She felt naked under his gaze, no matter how many layers of clothing she had on.

Blondie issued their passports--Meredith Mansell was her new name. He briefed her that they were scientists studying fennec foxes, and they were waiting for their permits to come through when they landed at the airport. By that time her eyes were blurring and her body was numbing, and she barely noticed when she was escorted outside to the gray, wet city streets. 

They bundled her in a taxi, and Fox's hand kept a hard grip on her leg, tightening whenever she moved. Being near him made tears of fear and pain rise and to her eyes. The heat and heaviness of his hand reminded her of his hot body crushing her from above.

Both men were dressed in suits, and Doe Eyes' dark curly hair was teased and combed straight. Doe Eyes had his gaze coldly averted out the window. She couldn't see anything in the carefully curated blankness of his face. He sat away from her in a way he rarely did, body angled towards the window. That left her sitting alone with Fox, and he took advantage of it, with his hand sliding deep between her thighs. Her insides tightened. She fought to stay awake, but her eyes drooped again, and she didn't wake up until they were at the airport. 

All she could see was a chaotic blur of clothes and hair, gaggles of tourists hanging off their boyfriends' necks, and post-Soviet women with their hair in feathered updos and clothes from decades ago. Harried and bustling airport denizens, and Shirley dragging her feet along the smooth tile. Her captors hooked their arms around hers to tow her along, hurrying her past the crowds of Bucharest International Airport.

Doe Eyes was still sulking, ignoring her angrily as he turned his face to the flight departure screen. He looked like a different man without his curls, diminutive and slim, a man you could pass right over in a crowd. Fox was simmering even in his neat cut suit, looking as if his muscular frame was going to burst right out. He looked every inch the mercenary, with his solid frame, square jaw and terrifying, cracked-ice eyes. Blondie was the most composed, dressed neatly in a well-fitting dark suit and his hair combed in its usual style. He had another lollipop in his mouth, and she remembered the taste of his lips, and the bitter grape on his tongue, and phantom taste bloomed in her mouth. He was negotiating passports in fluent Romanian. _Oscar Schneider. Cliff Arnold. Stuart Smart. Meredith Mansell._

"Miss Mansell," someone said to her. "Please place your luggage here."

Shirley's identity had been so thoroughly swept away that she responded dully, as if that had been her name for her whole life. She slid her slim carpet bag onto the conveyor belt.

Fox had slipped an arm around her, clutching her waist as hard as an iron bar. She could feel the steel beneath his arm, tense like he wanted to crush her waist into powder. She didn't look at his face, but she could feel his hard, cold eyes boring into her.

Shirley dozed off again while waiting for her flight. The leather of the seats was hot and sticky under her thighs. When she woke up, the lettering of the signs was blurred, and she thought she was catching a flight with Buck. She tried to speak to him, but Blondie silenced her with a glare that sparked like green ice behind his glasses. The moment she realized her situation, her stomach felt bottomless. 

***

On the airplane, she was sitting near the back, on a seat next to Doe Eyes. Doe Eyes still refused to look at her, keeping his eyes fixed firmly on the seat in front of them. His lips were pursed in a sullen pout.

Shirley's head throbbed where she rested it against the airplane wall. Her throat was dry. She was desperately thirsty. When the stewardess came by with water she wanted to weep, and felt pathetic for doing so.

As she reached for it Doe Eyes pulled it away, holding it out of reach.

"You really hurt my feelings," he said quietly, once the stewardess had left. Underneath his tone was a dark thread of something that chilled her to the bone. "I was so nice to you and made you feel so good. And then you turned around and treated me like dirt. That's not nice. That's not polite. I treated you holy. I didn't do what _he_ did to you. But you still called me awful names. Told me awful things."

His eyes were cold in a way she had never seen before. They were glassy and blank--not a doe's eyes, but a dead deer hung up to butcher.

 _There's a reason he was hired to kidnap me,_ she suddenly realized. _He's dangerous. He's done things. Just like Fox._

And all of her excuses died on her lips, pushed down by a wave of terror.

"I'm sorry," she whispered.

He observed her arrogantly. "You don't sound sorry enough."

She was so _thirsty._

"I am sorry. How can I prove it? I just want a little water," she begged in a weak voice. 

His eyes suddenly lit up from its black morass, back to childishness. "Oh! How about you give me a kiss?" He put the tip of his finger on his plump lips and quirked them into a smile.

Shirley looked at him in misery for a few moments. _Buck always treated me better when I did what he asked and didn't complain,_ she thought resignedly. 

She leaned forward and wrapped her arm around his shoulders, passionlessly pressing her lips to his. He responded with enough passion for both of them, kissing so hard her tongue went numb. She was so thirsty, she drank his saliva eagerly, swallowing it down her parched throat as he lapped at the inside of her cheeks.

It reminded her of her first kiss with Buck, and for a moment she was back in her teens, in that shady grove by her parents' ranch, and Buck's lips were on hers, heated and passionate, and for one moment she kissed back, and he responded excitedly, and out of the corner of her eye she saw Fox staring at her from the gap in the seats in front, a very nasty smile on his face.

After their sticky lips separated, Doe Eyes smiled and forced another dry white pill into her mouth. It stuck to her throat and made her gag, but achieved its desired effect and eventually made her eyes drift shut, the hum of the plane engine in her ears.

***

When Shirley woke, the sun was peeking over the horizon.

Dawn in an airplane is a magical experience. The side of the wing juts out, a white pen against the fluffy, drifting clouds and a lightening sky. Red light glints off the metal surface of the wing. 

The sunrise was red, washing over the far-spanning horizon. From each end of the earth, a slow glow was burning the deep blue of the night, like a strip of fire. It was shining off the wing in a dull reflection, a flare of pure light against the white metal. It hypnotized her as her forehead rested against the cold glass. 

A few minutes later, the plane was above ground. Wide, sparse sands stretched into infinity, dotted with dense scrublike trees. Thick reams of bushes dotted the land like brushes of green paint.

"Where are we?" She muttered through a cracked throat.

 _"Arriving in Tangier, Morocco,"_ chimed the flight attendant over the in flight announcement.

***

Tangier Airport was just the beginning.

At first, she was able to take a deep breath in the cool marble interior. She smelled the pleasant scent of roasting coffee, heard the deep chimes of French over the intercom. As they headed down the stairs to the exit, it began to bustle. 

A clamor of people shoving each other aside, some loudly offering to carry your bags for a fee. Bustling bodies and sweltering heat crowded the interior of the airport. Once again, Fox knew what to do. He butted people aside, shouting and pushing, and carved a path to the exit. Shirley was shaking off the remnants of her drugs, and was somewhat lucid as she emerged into the Moroccan sun.

Blondie hailed a taxi immediately, and they were once again squished in the backseat, Shirley's eyes half-lidded as the flat, tan buildings began to flash past. In the background, she could see a hazy expanse of water.

 _"Chefchouen,"_ said Blondie, and she wasn't sure it was an Arabic word or a place. The jet lag was catching up to her, and she was awake enough just to see a vast highway surrounded by scrubland and dunes before her eyes drifted shut again.

When she awoke finally, fully and alertly, she was surrounded by blue. She was forced out to stumble onto an ancient paved road. In front of her was a low, flat building with small dark windows glaring suspiciously at her. It was painted deep, vivid sky color.

Fox thrust his knuckles against her back. "Get in," he growled. "This is our home for the next few months."

***

The inside was spare and stark. The floor was brightly tiled with blue and red diamonds. Against one wall was a long embroidered sofa lined with threadbare pillows, and in the center was a large round table. To the side was a small kitchen embedded into the wall, and two narrow beds covered with flat tan duvets. The walls were covered by brightly-colored carpets, the colorful woven patterns making her head spin.

Outside the windows the clamor of Morocco went on, the calls to prayer, the hum of motorbikes, the shouts of women chiding their children. She felt trapped in her own little cage away from the city.

"I need to make some calls," Blondie said sharply. "Get yourselves comfortable, take your showers, sleep a little."

He left, and the door locked with a click behind him. Shirley felt a sharp sense of unease. Blondie was the only one with any sense of decorum or restraint, and she felt very exposed standing in a room with the two men who had assaulted her. 

Luckily for her, Fox was in no mood, and wordlessly entered the bathroom and turned on the shower. Doe Eyes turned on the television and immediately switched it to a sitcom _._ He seemed to have a strange fascination with American pop culture that grated on her and Fox, one of the few things she agreed with him about. Shirley had made a weak joke to Blondie that ended with "no ma'am, grape jelly jam", and Doe Eyes had latched onto it, repeating it over and over for days until Fox lost his temper and told him to cut it out.

Shirley sat down on the bed and pulled her shoes off. There was a mirror facing her from the opposite wall, and she stilled. She struggled to recognize the woman in the reflection. 

Her hair was a mess. The dye had washed out, and it had become a dishwater blonde that sprung in scraggly curls around her face. Her white dress shirt had become undone, and she was buttoning it before Blondie slammed into the room.

His face was livid as he pointed to her. "Outside."

The uneven, cobbled street was heavy against her feet, and she cowered as Blondie faced her. 

"Your _hasband,"_ he said, his voice tensing deeper into his native accent. "Has not answered our demands. He has not even acknowledged them. This leaves us in _quite_ a conundrum."

She stepped back and pressed her back against the hot bricks. He loomed over her, and even with his neat blonde hair and his sharp-cut suit, he seemed to have a hidden threat in his posture. His green eyes burned with dark frustration.

"We might have to… prove to him that you happen to be in danger. Imminent danger." His voice went terrifyingly quiet on the last words.

The words were poison to her ears. Her knees knocked together as she trembled against the wall. "Wh--what sort of imminent danger?" Her voice was straining, trying desperately to sound calm.

Blondie said nothing, but the look in his eyes made her want to scream.

He gripped her by the arm and wordlessly threw her back into the hostel.

***

The next few weeks were passed in a haze.

Inside the rooms, inside the beds, the tension between the four reached critical mass. One point, when Doe Eyes had been touching her and kissing her too amorously, she had retreated to the other bed to curl up beside Blondie. The man had murmured and rolled over, but when Shirley woke during the day, he was awake and staring at her beside him. Deprived of his glasses, his eyes were hard and cold as fresh mined emeralds. She was so close could see the creases at the edges of his eyes, the crow's feet that betrayed his age. Blondie was very irritable that next day, snapping at all three of them.She was becoming more and more worried that he would carry out his threat--whatever threat it was.

The four were on tenterhooks. The atmosphere had reached an unstable measure of paranoia. Fox and Blondie were jumping every time a car passed by, peering through the blinds in case a truckload of Interpol officers came to arrest them. Blondie had told Fox that under no circumstances was he to look for "accompaniment" on the streets, and especially not at night. The threat had spurred an argument which they nearly came to blows. 

Doe Eyes was unhappy at not being able to go to church, and spent a lot of time pestering her. Doe Eyes was like a puppy wagging his tail as he followed her, but he seemed to grow more infatuated with her each day. She could tell that he wanted to take the final step, but something was holding him back. Every time he held her to him, or pecked her lips, or let his hand rest on her knee, she could tell that it was agony for him to pull away.

Shirley tried to cover herself up more and more. She noticed how their eyes tracked her when they thought she wasn't looking, whether it be shamefully, like Blondie, or lustfully, like Fox. She kept herself sweet as possible and didn't talk back, did whatever they asked of her and didn't complain, just prayed for rescue--but was becoming terrified that it wasn't enough.

One morning, when the other two were gone, she resolved to approach Blondie as he sat at the table in his bathrobe. He was drinking strong Moroccan coffee and reading the newspaper. His blond hair was dark and damp from the shower. The radio in the corner was playing a folksy 70s station that Blondie constantly seemed to be tuning it to.

Shirley lifted the earthenware lid from the pot and carefully poured dark, steaming coffee to fill the brim of his cup. "What are you reading?"

Blondie smoothed the paper flat on the tabletop. "Your precious husband seems to be running his campaign quite successfully for a man whose wife has been kidnapped and held hostage. One would think he didn't even _have_ a wife with how little he brings you up."

Her heart gave that familiar pang. She looked at the faded picture splashed across the Arabic-language newspaper. Her husband, arm raised to wave at the crowd from him podium. In the background was his security detail, the mayor, Conna…

Shirley looked away. "These things take time. It must be complicated to go through all the… channels."

Blondie laughed derogatorily. "You're sweet, but brainless."

Shirley had to fight down her anger. "I have faith in my husband. We have a good marriage."

"So it seems." He closed the newspaper to stare at her coldly through gray-green eyes. "I pity you, Shirley, I really do."

She flinched as Blondie leaned forward on his elbows. "You're a pushover. A rube. And deluded. It annoys me. I've seen you in television, you're like a porcelain doll with no opinions. You just parrot whatever your husband says, a perfect demure little wife. You hide your head beneath your pillow whenever he's a little too close with that assistant of his… what was her name?"

She stood up straight, furious at him but with a secret ball of insecurity inside her. The insecurity made lash out.

"Do you have a wife?" She said through gritted teeth. 

"Men in my line of work don't tend to settle down." He turned the page of the newspaper, drumming his finger to the beat of the radio station.

"And I pity you for that." 

His fingers stopped drumming. For a moment, the only sound in the air was of the radio, and the gentle piano underscore of the song.

"I think you're getting old and bitter, and all of what you've done is catching up to you. Didn't you say you were about to retire? What do you think is waiting for you after retirement? A last, few miserable years of loneliness? Dying in a nursing home with no friends or family? Because, let's face it… you don't seem to me as the sort of man who keeps up with his family, either."

Her coldness was flowing through her mouth. She was almost shocked at the vitriol in her words, but then Conna rose in her mind again, and Blondie's snide comments, and her anger returned.

Blondie said nothing. His face was hidden behind the newspaper. She could see the tops of his glasses, tilted downward towards the page, and nothing else.

The seconds ticked past in total silence. 

Blondie moved suddenly, and she flinched. "Isn't this a beautiful song?" His voice was quiet. "It's one of my favorites, actually. Do you know how to dance, Mrs. DeForge? You look like an elegant woman. I'm sure you do."

Shirley took a step back. The tiles were cold under her heel.

The voice crackled through the speakers, and the sunlight felt suddenly very cold against her skin.

_Evangeline..._

_Evangeline..._

The blond man gripped her waist hard. He gripped one hand in his and slowly pulled it up.

His eyes were venom. Her fingers curled around his iron-hard grip as he held her hand up.

Blondie led her into a shaky dance. By the second step she could tell that he knew his way around a waltz. His movements were slow and accurate, and his hands were forcing her into each step.

_Evangeline…_

_In the night you came to me..._

Her face was an inch from hers. His lips were tightly pressed together, but she could feel the air from his nostrils heave in and out.

She could tell immediately that he was trying to intimidate her. With every step he took, he jerked her along. His arm was tight around her waist. 

Shirley stood on the tips of her toes and wrapped her arm strongly around his neck. She met his eyes square on. She was _not_ going to submit to him. She was not frightened of him. She wasn't… she _wasn't._

_Evangeline…_

_And I, your loyal subject, there is nothing that you could not ask of me…_

"You don't want to admit it, do you?" Shirley said through gritted teeth. The tips of her yellowing hair lifted, brushing her shoulders--they were starting to curl rebelliously at the ends, returning to the platinum she'd had before her hair had been dyed. "You're just a lonely, sad, insecure old man and you _know_ that. Was the money worth it? Was it, really?'

_Now and then you'd touch my arm…_

_You gave me so much more.._

_Your never wanted permanence..._

_And a home and kids were never in your view..._

His thin lips were tensing at the edges. He leaned forward, drawing her into one more sidestep, and said in a voice that chilled her to bone, "Lonely and bitter I may be. But this old man has done things that you couldn't even dream of. To many, many people. Maybe people just… like… you." 

And he brutally kissed her. 

This time, she _did_ feel heat on his lips, a tinge of hateful lust that she hadn't felt before

_...and all the rules I've known have changed. Evangeline..._

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the somewhat noneventful transition chapter. Next chapter gets bad, and the next one gets badder. That's all I can say.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> On a night on the town, Shirley and Doe Eyes have an unpleasant encounter, and she gets a glimpse of just what lies below those doe eyes.

The door slammed open, and Doe Eyes and Fox stepped in.

Shirley and Blondie were sitting at the table, saying nothing. Blondie had gone back to his newspaper, and the radio had switched to another song. 

Doe Eyes was carrying a plastic bag full of groceries. Fox didn't carry anything but a scowl.

"How was Chefchouen?" Shirley squeaked, hurriedly getting up to take the groceries.

"I've been to Chefchouen before," snorted Fox. "There's nothing to see, it's a tourist trap. There's nothing to do in Morocco anymore since it regained stability. No jobs. Nothing." He bitterly slid his boots off.

"What were you two talking about?" Said Doe Eyes to Blondie curiously. "Shirley looks all flushed. Did you ask her a dirty question?" 

Blondie smiled and returned to his paper. "We were just reading the paper together. Poor Shirley. Tut tut tut. Her husband is being quite the freewheeler now that she's gone." 

Fox laughed and laid back on the bed. "Even after Shirley kept following him like a dog? Damn, Shir-ley. After all those TV appearances you did? All that lobbying? Doing yourself up like a Barbie doll? And after all that posturing, you ended up with us, in a fucking hostel in Morocco." 

"Go ahead and judge me all you want," she snapped weakly. "I've just had my mother die, do you think it was easy to keep a straight face in the middle of the campaign? I didn't take a week off. I didn't stop giving interviews."

"And now look what's happened. You're completely gone from the campaign and future president DeForge doesn't give a shit. Was leaving your mother alone so important?"

Shirley's teeth were grinding against each other. She became suddenly aware of how much she hated these three men, from Fox lying on the bed with his huge body draped over it like a cat, watching her with a nasty smile, to Blondie watching them both with a look of smug satisfaction behind his polished glasses, and even Doe Eyes, who was watching their standoff with bright, interested eyes. And the hatred was mixed with an overwhelming sadness. She thought of her mother dying alone wondering where she was, and some part of her whispered _maybe they're right,_ and that made Shirley angrier.

"You have a lot of nerve talking about my mother like that. Where's your mother? Is she still alive? I bet she's ashamed of you, if she is." 

Fox shifted to sit back against the bedstead, playing with his wallet. His shirt was rolled up on the bottom, and she saw a sliver of rock-hard muscle. "I don't know what happened to my old lady. Hell, she's probably still in that dingy apartment, raving and ranting that she doesn't get to beat me anymore when the faucet drips or the upstairs neighbors are loud." He snorted. "Old bitch." He looked over at Blondie. "What happened to your mama? She disown you?"

"I'm an old man. She's long gone." For a moment, the smugness had left Blondie's tone. The silence hung in the air, and stretched on.

"I'm sorry," Shirley said to him, and she almost meant it. Losing a mother was a terrible thing, and she knew the pain would never end.

"Look at Miss Shirley, acting so syrupy." Fox scoffed.

All the anger and fear had bled out of her in one rush. She couldn't even bring herself to be angry at Fox. She missed her mother, suddenly and painfully.

Shirley looked at Doe Eyes. "What about you?"

"I never knew her," Doe Eyes said, looking bewildered. "I don't think I ever had one."

The air was becoming stale. She could sense the roiling emotions in the room, writhing like a floor of black worms beneath the rug. She suddenly wanted to get out. She _needed_ to get out.

Shirley gripped Doe Eyes' arm. "Shouldn't we have dinner soon? Is there something special you want me to make?"

Doe Eyes brightened up. "I have a better idea. Shirley, let's go out to eat. It's almost evening. I know some places we can go that are the bees knees!" _He really does watch too many '50s movies._

Shirley looked at Blondie. His face was darker than it had been, and he glared at her hard. "Keep. An. Eye. On. Her."

Doe Eyes pulled her up, and she took a minute to fix her hair and put on some jeans and a long-sleeved blouse before he tugged her out the door.

The warm wind blew her hair back. They ran down narrow rickety alleys, past the azure faded walls. His hand was hot in hers, gripping her firmly and tightly. 

When they emerged onto the main vein of the street, the clamor nearly deafened her. People shouted and shoved at each other for the evening rush of dinner, clogged with tourists with their brightly colored backpacks and fathers holding their sons on their shoulders. The sand-baked stones were hot under her feet.

The smell of fresh-baked loaves of bread and a thousand tart spices was thick in the air. She closed her eyes and inhaled for a moment.

Doe Eyes spoke rapid and fluent Arabic to a man with a large clay pot, who poured them both a thick creamy soup into earthenware bowls along with two warm brown patties of bread.

They sat down to eat on a street corner. The ancient walls were pitted and scarred beneath her back. The soup was creamy and mild, a bean soup of some sort that filled her up quick. 

Doe Eyes and her watched the people laugh and chatter and barter and pass by as the evening waned to night and the dusk fell over the buildings in a wash of red. Doe Eyes wore a black turtleneck and jeans, and looked very normal. His long legs were folded underneath him, and his loose curls ruffled softly in the warm air. 

"You know, Shirley," he said in between mouthful of his bread, "you never told me about your mommy and daddy. What were they like? What is it like… having parents?" He turned his eyes on her, looking very interested and eager.

She felt a pang of sympathy for him. Then she thought of her mother, and a lump rose to her throat. She forced a smile. "My mother was… she was a wonderful woman. She was gentle and she was always there for me. She grew up like a military brat, like me, on a base. Her mom, my grandmother, had left their family early on, so she grew up knowing how to do everything… she taught me everything I know…" the thought of her mother made her eyes swim.

Shirley closed her eyes and let the bustling heat of the air wash over her. Doe Eyes' hand covered hers, as hot as the evening against her lips.

He sounded very eager, as if he were living vicariously through her words. "And they celebrated Christmas and Easter and put ornaments on the tree and wrapped presents and gave you candy?"

"Oh yes, we had holidays. But mostly just mom and I… My dad was always gone. He was a gruff, military type, married to his job. He died in an accident on a base in the Gulf of Mexico… plane mishap. I remember when it happened, getting the phone call and not really crying. He might as well have been a stranger to me. I'd left out so long ago… It was hard, living on base. I moved out as soon as I met Buck." She felt even warmer inside. "When Buck and I…"

Her voice petered out as he slipped his hand from atop hers. She looked over at him. His eyes were dark and liquid as a pot of oil. Whenever he smiled at her, his freckles crinkled around his tiny nose. Buck had freckles. He had been such a handsome private, in his uniform and red hair and those cute, _mischievous_ freckles…

"You remind me of him," she said quietly in between a lull in the bustling. "Buck, I mean. You know, you're both very kind. So caring… so gentle." She smiled as she remembered their first night together. Buck's gentle hands on hers, his silent attentiveness as the raucous wedding party echoed in the background. "He's… a perfect husband. I couldn't ask for anything more." She wanted to cry. "I miss him."

Doe Eyes was uncharacteristically silent for a few minutes. "You really love him, don't you?" He said quietly. But then there was something under his tone, something agitated that put her on guard.

Shirley was shocked by Doe Eyes hanging an arm around her shoulders and giving her a wet kiss. She turned away and wiped her mouth when he wasn't looking.

***

They wandered around the blue-washed city for what seemed like hours. His arm was locked tightly in hers. It reminded her of Buck again, and the way they walked around the forest beyond the military base. Buck always used to offer her his hand, so gentlemanly. Doe Eyes had a certain gentlemanliness to him too--but it was too inauthentic, as if he were cheaply aping old romance movies. 

But it was better than nothing. His grip was comforting. And she felt almost calm for a moment. Almost content. Anything was better than that little slice of hell she was returning to, and Blondie's ice-cold eyes and threats.

Doe Eyes smiled that big innocent smile at her and pulled her aside. "Come on over here."

"Where are we going?"

They ducked into the medina with its high, damp walls and shadowed interior. He twirled her around in a pirouette in the clowder of tourists, unseen. And in a dark corner of an empty street, he pressed himself against her, his heart thumping against hers.

His hair was thick and damp, clinging in loose curls to his shoulders as he pressed her to the stone corner. 

The sunset shone off his coal-black hair and his wide dark irises. Black and gleaming as the night.

"That thing he did to you--can I do to that to you, too?" He whispered.

It took her a moment to realize what he meant. _Fox's grunts. The heaves of his muscled chest. The thick, throbbing length within her._

_The way Buck locked his arm around her neck and pulled her into a kiss, his hips moving languidly within her in a wonderful wash of pleasure._

She didn't know which one Doe Eyes was referring to, and that terrified her.

Shirley looked over his shoulder, trying to suppress a shiver. "It's not--God wouldn't want it. I'm already married."

Doe Eyes paused, brushing a dark curl beneath his ear. Then his face split in a disturbingly innocent smile. "I think we're married in the eyes of God. I think that your husband isn't godly enough to be your husband. I am. I would be more virtuous and treat you gently. I'd treat you like a treasure and give you so many children."

The absolute delusion in his eyes and voice froze her. "Children?" Her voice was a squeak. She could feel the ridge of his cock grind through her denim, hard and pressing and she was forced to spread her legs as his hips ground harder against her.

"Yes. All our little cute babies, our whole family, like _Leave it to Beaver._ I think we would perfect parents. And I would be a perfect husband! Like Desi Arnaz!" He was working himself up. He caught her jaw to press a fawn's kiss to her lips. 

Shirley tried to yank her head away from his kisses, but they turned more passionate. The more she struggled, the more he ground her body against the stone walls, trapping her.

His voice was agitated. "Your husband doesn't appreciate you, or love you, not the way I do! He doesn't deserve you!"

He slid a cold hand under her waistband. His fingers were a chill shock against her warm, wet cleft. Shirley turned her face away to press against the rough surface of the stone.

Doe Eyes lifted her legs to wrap around his waist, supporting her back against the wall. Her jeans and panties were around her ankles then, with a dozen people bustling a few feet away just beyond the shadowed corner. His cock laid against the bare white flesh of her twitching lips, throbbing slowly against her thin red slit, and she felt the surge in her belly as he slowly sunk himself into her. Her nipples pricked and her breath froze. _If I, maybe if I scream, they'll find me and save me, they'll take me away from these godforsaken men--_

One heavy thrust and her body was numbing with pleasure. His breath was hot against her ear. He was in her, and she was in him, and he whispered shaky words of love she could not decipher as his hips sped up, slamming her against the wall. She gritted her teeth and ground her cheek against the jagged stone until her cheek bled.

But as much as she hated it, her body was starting to respond. Her back arched as he slid back and forth. This was so different from Fox. This was almost worshipful. The slow drag of the edges of his cock against her insides was making her mind fray. Before she knew it, she was curving her back to meet his hard chest, with the tart spices in the air and the hot pulsing of her clit between her sweaty thighs…

She buried her face in his thick, damp curls. Her heart was in her throat as she thought deliriously…

_Buck never touched me like this…_

And she snapped back to reality.

She kicked him away in a sudden fit of disgust. "Get off me," Shirley spat, and he stumbled away. She covered herself with her shirt and pulled up her jeans.

Doe Eyes' back was against the bustling entrance of the alleyway, fly undone. He looked lost. He flinched as she hissed at him, spitting like a viper.

"I'd never cheat on Buck for you. You're not _half_ the man he is. Buck is kind and generous and loving and he--he'd never do anything like what _you_ just did. You're--you're nothing. You're no one. You're a stranger. And a rapist, just like that other man back there. You're not any different than they are!"

Her repressed anger was spilling out in a waterfall. Her hurt was mixed with betrayal at letting her heart soften towards him. 

Doe Eyes' dark confused eyes, his cocked head, his hurt look--his hurt look slowly transitioning to venom--had no effect but to arouse contempt within her. 

"Take me back, _whoever you are_ ." _How dare you do this to me,_ echoed in her mind, and she knew he heard it. She clenched her legs at the memory of his tongue, that dark night in Bucharest. _What a naive fool I am. I should have known what kind of a man he was. What he would try to do. He's just a panting, slavering dog, just like Fox, without the guts to be honest about it._

Doe Eyes stiffly escorted her home among the waning crowd, down the alleyways to their hostel sunken into the winding walls. His arm clenched hers hard, so hard that it began to ache, but she kept her jaw shut and didn't complain.

Before they entered the painted, barred door, he hooked a hand around her waist and slammed her against the wall. Her head knocked into the stone, making it erupt with pain.

His face was an inch away from hers, breath spiralling over her face. His eyes were wide and utterly blank, like an endless well. They were the same eyes as when he had stared at her across the limousine, completely devoid of emotion.

"I killed my first man when I was ten," he said quietly. In his pupils, she believed every word.

He forced a kiss on her face as she recoiled backwards, pressing his lips against her cheek. They were soft and cold, like his voice

"You should start treating me with some more gratefulness. And _respect_."

His arm went to cross over her neck. His slim arm blocked her windpipe. She began to struggle.

Doe Eyes looked at her, unblinking. His other arm went clench over her spasming throat, and she helplessly tried to drag them off in faint handfuls. Despite his small and slim build, his arms were like talons, and his grip was terrifyingly professional. She could feel the wiry muscle beneath his sleeves.

"He's nothing, this husband of yours. And you're just as disgusting as him to love him back. He doesn't _want_ you, when will you _realize_ that?" 

He twisted his arms in their iron grip. They criss crossed over her throat, and brutally clamped around her windpipe. 

"If I ever find your husband, I'm going to kill him," he commented, twisting his arms harder. "I'll show you how much more of a man I am. You'll have no choice but to admit it, then and there. You'll regret everything you've ever said to me… every time you've ever rejected me…"

Shirley's eyes were swimming and darkening at the edges. The small bones in her neck were tensing, strained to the point of snapping. 

The walls of the blue cracked buildings blurred until they were nothing but a smudge of blue. The sounds of the streets and the mosques dimmed and muted in her ears.

Tears dripped down her cheeks to trickle down her neck.

Shirley knew she was going to die. It came to her just as Doe Eyes' arms squeezed the last breath out of her. It came so suddenly that is sent a spike of adrenaline into her failing body, and made animal terror seize ahold of her. She clawed desperately at his wrists.

His eyes were as cold and emotionless as a doll, like a child whose toy had broken. His grip was strong, unwavering, and almost offhand, like he was strangling a chicken.

Her weak fingers loosened on his arm. _Please,_ she thought desperately, _I--I promise, I'll never reject you again. You're my soul mate. My husband, the one that God has chosen for me. I'll say it. I swear it--_ and then she almost _did_ love him, in that one brief, terrifying moment where she looked into Doe Eyes' eyes and felt her life begin to dribble out of her mind.

And he let her go. 

He smiled, took her arm, and escorted her in.

***

The two other men were uncharacteristically silent when she scrambled into the hostel. Blondie was still dressed in his tan suit, but Fox had taken off his shirt in the heat of the hostel. His hair was slick with sweat and coming loose down his nape. His blue eyes flicked up like penlights when she fled inside, clutching her throat. Her voice was hoarse.

"You won't believe what he did to me," she burst out angrily, half-sobbing, to the only man who would care, Blondie-- who was staring sharply at her from the table, unwrapping a lollipop.

"He strangled me and violated me! He r--he r--" Shirley's voice failed her as the full realization of what had happened sunk in. She clenched her knees together against the wetness that dripped down her thighs and erupted in a fit of coughing, clutching her bruised neck. 

_"What?"_ Blondie's voice curled to a snarl. He kicked his chair back and stood up, taking ominous steps towards the blank-eyed, surprised Doe Eyes. His green eyes were turning fiery, and she could hear his accent slip as he hissed.

"You had her in _public?_ In a _muslim country?_ What if someone had seen you? You would have drawn attention to ourselves. This is the last thing we need. What the bloody hell were you _thinking_? After the drunk had his way with her, you think that gives you carte blanche to do anything you want with her in broad daylight? Fuck her like a whore on a street corner?"

Doe Eyes looked innocently confused. Before he could speak, she broke in with cracked words. "He _raped_ me," she wailed. The pain and damage of so much humiliation was overwhelming her. She was crying, terrified and crumpling onto her hands and knees.

Blondie looked at her coldly from behind his eyeglasses, as if she were a whining child. "Take a shower, then. You're a grown and married woman. You can deal with it." He turned back to Doe Eyes.

Her entire being crumbled. Shirley slid against the stone block wall of their hostel. _I want to go home._ Her throat throbbed.

Fox laughed cruelly from where he was lying on the bed. "Little Shirley got her little cherry popped by how many different men, now? Me, your husband, the kid over there, and maybe that blond nance here will get his turn… she'll be more experienced than a street whore once we're done with her."

He took such pleasure from misery, she could barely comprehend it. Shirley wanted to scream and rage, but just curled limply up on the bed. Her neck hurt when she moved it even an inch. The television buzzed in the background. She closed her eyes.

***

Shirley refused to talk to all three of them throughout the week. The fights got worse between them. When Fox was clipping his beard in the bathroom, Blondie had cursed him out for leaving a mess in the sink, which led to an extended fight that left her cowering in the corner and both men with bruises and Blondie with a black eye. Blondie kept leaving the hostel to talk on the phone to his clients, and she could hear him shouting from down the street. Whoever was on the other line was shouting right back.

The clock on the wall ticked steadily, counting down seconds to minutes to days to weeks.

"He is not stepping down," hissed Blondie to Doe Eyes one day. "This is dragging… on and on and on.. we're babysitting and coddling that woman who hates us every second of every day. I have a schedule I need to uphold and people abroad I need to stay in contact with. She needs to leave so I can get back to my life."

Doe Eyes blinked boyishly. "Why do we want her to leave?"

Shirley did not like his tone.

She was cooking dinner once when Blondie went to press his body against hers from behind. He said nothing, shirt loose against her blouse, did nothing but watch the meal she was cooking from above her shoulder. But he lingered a bit too long, and the hot press of his body seemed to sink into hers, even when he pulled away to his own duties.

The cocks of all the men pulsed. It was only a matter of time before the thread of lust broke.

And it did.

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey guys! Two updates in one week, woot! Happy thanksgiving! 🦃 Next chapter is the first """story climax""" as you can probably tell by the last line. 😬😬


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The tension breaks, and the men take out their frustration on Shirley.

The chillness of the winter air sunk into her face, into her uncovered fingers. The frosted grass crunched under her shoes.

The ranch house loomed above her, blocking out the starlit night.

Shirley took one step onto the porch stairs. The wooden stair was covered with a frost sheet that shattered, the only sound in a forest of dark silence.

The house was not as she had remembered. There was nothing of the warm comfort that she had experienced as a little girl, and then as an exhausted woman. The rug underneath her was crusted with frost, and the mirrors she had made faces in as a child were fogged over with cold.

She saw a dim light at the end of the hall, an open door. It shone dark blue over the opposite wall.

Shirley walked in quietly, trying to tread carefully in her boots, because she knew that the loudness of her clomps upset Mom.

It was dark in the bedroom, only the starlight shining a pale veil over the room. The overstuffed chairs. The open closet, Mom's familiar sweatpants and dresses silent and unrustling.

Her mouth was half open. She looked shriveled, like a mummy. She was so many years away from the flushed-face woman who had swept her up in her arms. The woman smiling and laughing in her memories.

Her skin was pale and wrinkled. Her mouth was a puckered hole, and her eyes were pits in her face as she blinked them open.

Mom said something, and it was so hoarse and cracked it took her a while to realize it was her name.

She knelt on the bedside. Her mother's body was outlined like a skeleton underneath the covers. 

"Mom?"

"Do it," the mummy retched.

"Do what?"

Her dry eyeballs rolled in their sockets. "If it gets to be too bad…"

There was a certain silence that settled over them. Shirley's brain pulsed.  _ If she had asked me this when she was dying… _

_ If I had been with her… _

Shirley's eyes were watering, teardrops falling to spread over the sheets in circles of damp.

"Then do it."

Mom reached out her trembling hands and guided Shirley's to her neck.

Her neck was fleshy and limp, like a chicken's neck. But her voice was the Mom she had always known.

Shirley began to sob. "I wish I had been here, Mom."

"But you weren't. And you might as well have just killed me."

Shirley was crying.

Big, ugly tears streaked down her cheeks as she buried her face in her mother's side. Whatever skeleton had been left behind, Shirley took comfort from it just as she had as a little girl. She curled up on the bed next to her. "I'm sorry, Mom. I wish I'd been there. I wish, I would, I love you, I love you, I  _ love  _ you--"

A creak of a footstep echoed behind her. And she turned around.

***

Shirley woke.

For a moment, she was still in the ranch house with her mother, the mother she had betrayed and left to die alone. Her eyes saw nothing but the blue of the ceiling.

And then Fox's hard hand gripped her leg, rough thumb pressing hard enough to bruise. "You awake, little girl?"

The sneering endearment was enough to yank her fully awake immediately. Fox's voice always had that  _ edge _ to it. 

But now it seemed stranger. More satisfied.

She sat up and pulled her t-shirt over her bare legs. "Wh-what is it?"

There was a camera on a stand sitting in the corner of the room. Blondie was bent down, fiddling with it. He straightened up, in that tweed suit of his, and  _ smiled. _

***

"Your precious husband doesn't seem to care about his  _ beautiful _ wife." Fox was stripping his shirt off, shrugging off his sleeveless shirt to reveal a heavily muscled, broad chest. "In fact, not even our  _ fucking  _ clients seem to care much. They haven't answered our calls in a  _ week." _

Shirley's wide, terrified hazel eyes darted from Fox to Doe Eyes, who was primly sitting on the edge of the bed. He had long, muscled legs--toned and slender, like a swimmer or runner.

It took her a moment before she realized he was naked. 

"Maybe this will convince him to take his wife back, finally. Although with your tight pussy, we might keep you for a little longer…"

Shirley looked at Doe Eyes, her eyes searching desperately for an unsaid help, begging him,  _ please-- _

He had a pleasant sort of smile on his face, as if he was patiently waiting for his turn.

Doe Eyes planted a kiss on her cheek. The edges of his eyes were crinkled joyfully, and it when they blinked open, she saw the yawning abyss underneath. "Can I go next?"

Tears of horror began to trickle down her cheeks, to be swallowed by the dark, empty lens of the camera.

***

"Should we give her heroin? It will make it easier on her. And, she won't give us as much trouble. She'll do everything we tell her to do." Doe Eyes sounded almost worried.

"No. We want her to be crying the whole time. Then maybe DeForge will step down." Blondie's voice was offhand, but she could hear the brutal pragmatism underneath. As if she were just a thing to them.

Fox unbuckled his fly and pulled his pants beneath his knees. His cock was huge and erect, the head wet with a dribble of precum. Her insides constricted at the sight of it, remembering how it had battered her that night he decided to ravage her.

"I'll do anything," Shirley begged. "Any amount of money. I'll get it to you. In unmarked notes. Just name the price, name the price,  _ please  _ name the price--"

Blondie spoke up again, as if her words were air. "Make sure your faces don't show. Keep your heads above the camera lens."

She realized that it was over then. And the realization did not come easily.

Fox grabbed her ankle and yanked her forward in one movement. He forced himself deeply into her, setting into an immediate, brutal pace.

His cock was hard as a rock as it speared against her soft pink insides, making her gut erupt with pain. He gripped her legs, spreading them wide and pinning her knees above her waist. The pain was in her backbone now as he forced her legs up higher, slamming his huge waist against her slender one. His broad, muscled shoulders juddered as he thrust forward, and his head was bowed just enough for his dark hair to fall to shield his face. Nothing was visible except for his wide, vicious smile, his sharp eyeteeth visible like the fangs of a wild animal.

The deep stabbing of his cock bruised her insides. She was dry as a tunnel as his length tore her inside, and she felt blood begin to stain her thighs. His cock came away stained with it.

The pain was too much, it was overwhelming her, burning though her brain and sinking needles into her legs, and Shirley lashed out desperately, freeing one leg and slamming it into his midriff.

Fox broke free from her body, clutching his flat stomach in surprise, before his eyes flashed ice.

Hit fist hit her eye with an audible crunch. Agony exploded through her skull as he drove it into her face. Her back arched, and she cried plaintively as she curled onto her side, hands clenched over her rapidly swelling eye socket.

"Don't be so mean to her!" Doe Eyes sounded upset.

"No. Rough her up a little bit." Blondie sounded detached. "So her husband knows we mean business." Through her good eye, she saw him steady the camera and click a button on its side, zooming in on her face. His thin lips were pressed in an impassive line.

She wept and curled on her side, trying to hide her face in the crook of Doe Eyes' elbow. He took her in his arms, warm and comforting, and she felt the eager press of his erection on her thigh. "I'll make you feel warm inside."

Doe Eyes rolled over on top of her, and his hand made its way between her thighs. He stroked her numb, bleeding opening, and rubbed her small pink clit between his fingers until pleasure began to bleed into the pain.

Her mind was drifting. She felt his mouth close around her nipple, warm and wet. The tip of his tongue caressed her peaked tip.

Her eyes dreamily found the camera. Her eyes were reflected in the black lens, slack with despair. Her husband would see this. The whole  _ world _ would see this.

Her legs started to tremble with humiliated, unwilling pleasure as Doe Eyes slowly slid into her.

He was smaller and thinner than Fox, and so much gentler. But with his body completely molded to her, she could feel the exciting thumping of his heart pulsing against her chest. It was erratic and eager, the same animal lust as Fox's.

Fox was bent on his knees to his side, sliding his hand over his massive erection as Doe Eyes began to set up a rhythm. "Lover boy's really going at it. I never thought he could give it so hard."

From between the bruised, swelling lids of her black eye, she saw Blondie fix the camera, then take off his jacket. "Move over."

Shirley closed her eyes.

She felt Doe Eyes roll until they lay side by side. Her waist was nestled between his strong legs as his cock kept pummelling inside her.

Fox lay heavily beside her on the bed as well. Then she felt the mattress dip as Blondie sat down as well.

Fox lifted her legs to arch back around his waist. His swollen, wet cockhead nudged beside Doe Eyes's churning length to brush her the same stretched slit.

A cold hand grabbed her face, and thumbs worked into her mouth to force it open.

Shirley wanted Buck, she wanted her mother, she wanted to go home, she wanted to  _ die _ .

***

There was a shiny red patch of skin on Fox's upper arm, twitching as his arms thrust forward. It was puffy and scarred, as if a tattoo had been burned off. She didn't quite know why she had noticed it. Her mind was floating, floating above the three bodies crushing her into the mattress.

Fox laughed derisively. "Poor little prim housewife. Didn't think her little pink pussy was gonna be spread out by any of these cocks. What will your precious godly husband think when he sees a video of his little wife being raped… and loving it?"

"That's blasphemous," Doe Eyes murmured through a mouthful of teat. 

"Shut up. The only thing she'll be worshipping now is our dicks. She's a slave now. All she's good for is sucking and fucking and riding us to heaven. She's no uppity politician's housewife. She's our whore, nothing but gutter trash we've chosen to service our cocks for the rest of her life."

_ Rest… rest of my life? _

A certain fear was bleeding into her limbs from her prone position, even with mouths sucking pleasure from her sensitive nipples and cocks rubbing and stimulating her stretched and sensitive walls.

Blondie arched his hips deeply, forcing the tip of his dick down into her throat. He gripped her hair, forcing her bloody, bruised and tear-stained face to look directly into the camera.

"Once those two are tired out I'll be taking my fill of your cunt," he said coldly. She believed him as he gripped her face and forced his hot cock deeper into her throat.

Outside this little slice of hell, the call to prayer echoed in its pure, droning voice on the streets as she was brutally violated in the small room.

Another thrust that scraped her insides. Doe Eyes panted. Shirley's eyes pricked. Tears watered down her cheeks and onto the sides of Blondie's swollen cock as her throat spasmed, trying desperately to swallow more of his pulsing length. Doe Eyes let go of her breast to kiss a line up her throat, his lips trailing over her sensitive skin. It was a strangely affectionate display of tenderness, in the middle of such a brutal rape by two other men.

Doe Eyes whispered an endearment in her ear, in another language. It was like he was in another world.

The slow, burning pleasure was overwhelming her, no matter how much she cursed it. She prayed desperately to God, begging Him for His mercy, tried to remember her mother--some shred of memory to take her away from here--but _then---_

The edge of Doe Eyes' cock angled upward, rubbing deliciously at her clit, and the jolt made her body spasm. Her throat clenched around the base of Blondie's cock, sucking it deeper as Doe Eyes ground his hips in slow, agonizing circles. His black curls were damp with sweat, clinging to his slim shoulders.

Fox's hard, muscular chest was a furnace behind her, and he let out a low groan as his waist surged upward. Her legs were spread obscenely, as two men's cocks pulled and thrust and conquered her fertile insides.

Her back arched against his heavy, heaving chest, pulsing with heartbeats against his trembling white back. Their sweat mingled as he slid himself deep, his cock forcing her pussy to stretch around it.

Shirley was full, and was fulfilled in a way she had never expected to become. Her teats were tingling with sparks, melting into pleasure as he again sealed his wet mouth over her trembling, ripe nipple.

The blood on her thighs was drying now.

Her throat clenched deep as her climax hit her, Blondie's warm, thick lust streaming down her throat in a way that made her clit twitch and her body shudder in a sudden, paradisical wave of hot, heavenly pleasure. All three cocks had brought her to heaven, in a feeling she desperately hated couldn't stop loving. A feeling that made her legs tremble and her clit pulse and her legs unwillingly spread so their hard cocks could force themselves in deeper, stimulating her wanton, filled pussy.

Tears dripped down her bruised face, along with a trickle of semen as it pumped down her throat. 

And now, she was not even aware of the glinting, opaque surface of the camera. 

The numbing pleasure spread from her legs to the tips of her trembling toes.

_ this is rape. _

She tasted blood.

_ i am being raped. _

The pain and pleasure had become a whirl. She felt the sting and misery as much as her heart soared to heaven, and her legs and belly trembled with another wave of delicious heat. Two twin streams of seed soaked her insides to the brim, both bodies trembling taut against her as they filled her with their warmth.

***

The faint light of the lanterns shone on the ancient stones, worn cracked by a million sandals. It beat off the walls, the sky blue paint dulling in the dark of the night.

Windows shone with small warm lights, a thousand square dots lining the empty streets. Families, grandparents, children argued and laughed and put supper on the stove. Music from their radios drifted into the silent streets.

A shard of light from the lantern peeked through the gap of a heavy, thick curtain.

It shone onto a stained white bedcover, off of a pair of dry, cracked lips, crusted with semen and worn with toothmarks.

The swollen, purpled eye of the woman lying prone on the bed twitched open, and flicked over to the man sitting beside her.

The man who sat beside the bed was completely naked. The dim light shone off the planes of his muscled arms, the rock solidness of his chest. His dark hair was slicked against his neck, and his pale eyes shone with an unearthly glow.

The glow of a cigarette burned in the dark silence of the room. Ashes were flicked to scatter over the threadbare rug. And a deep, gruff voice sounded.

"You know, a long, long time ago, I was told a story by a Kurd I worked with.  _ A man in Baghdad sent his servant to the market. The servant ran back, shaking in terror. He said, 'Master, when I went to the market, I met Death, and she pointed at me with her long finger. Please, Master, I do not wish to die. Lend me your horse and I will go away from here, away to Samarra, and she will not find me there.' _

_ So he did, and the servant ran away on his master's steed. The master went to the market, and there he found Death. _

_ He asked her, 'Why did you point at my servant this morning?' _

_ And Death said, 'I meant him no harm. I simply recognized him. I have an appointment with him today, in Samarra.' _ "

The man leaned forward and blew a cloud of smoke into her face.

"I can see in your face you haven't accepted this yet. But you will. You'll learn to accept it. Just like the man in Samarra."

His lips curved into a vicious smile.

"After all, like Death, no matter how many times you try and escape, we will always catch up to you."

He put out the cigarette butt on her breast.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aaaand... title drop.  
> Next chapter, we introduce the B plot.


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Conna receives a video.

Conna Matthews had felt sick to her stomach ever since she had gotten the picture. Even her dirty little dalliance with the next president didn't hold the appeal it had at one time. Every time Buck kissed her, the sight of Mrs. DeForge's drugged, undressed body rose in her mind, turning her mouth sour.

Mrs. DeForge had always been polite to her, but cool. Conna could tell that the prim blonde woman could sense the electricity between her and her husband, and treated her accordingly. The woman had always been the epitome of a politician's wife, with highly teased blonde ringlets, a face made up to perfection, and a smile as fake as a three-dollar bill.

But now those curls were tangled, messy and caked together, and that perfectly made-up mouth was dripping with cum, and those light hazel eyes were swollen with bruises.

Conna's nails bit into her palms so hard they bent backwards. Her whole body was still with horror as the grainy video expanded. Mrs. DeForge was lying on a grimy bed, with two men's bodies crushing her between them. One was huge and solid, with arms like rods of steel--the other one was small and slim, and his fingers kept reaching down to skim and caress her breasts and body. 

The quality added to the horror of it. It looked to have been filmed on a low-quality camcorder--the frames broke up and their bodies blurred together, and it was completely silent, although Mrs. DeForge's mouth gaped in plaintive sobs and her ribcage heaved with misery. Conna felt like she was watching a snuff film.

Conna quietly brought in the laptop to Buck's newest meeting. He was giving an interview to some environmental agency, his broad jaw spread in a friendly smile. She did so love that smile of his. He was such a handsome man, perfectly fit to be leader of this country. His gorgeous, red-haired head had appeared on campaign posters, looking like a movie star. She remembered being just out of college on her VA loan, and enamored by his emotional speeches and handsome face. But as the people filtered out, she just felt sour nausea. "Buck?"

He leaned back with a seductive smile, hand going to his fly. "Come on over, Conna baby."

"No." Conna brought her laptop over, hands shaking so hard she nearly dropped it. 

Buck watched with curiosity, then his eyes widened with horror. Then they settled into something contemplative.

The grainy frames reflected off his pupils. 

"She's having a good time, isn't she?"

His soft murmur sent her into half rage, half tears. "What? Why? Why would you think that? Why would you--!"

"Look." He pointed to the screen. The video was at its end, and Mrs. DeForge was slack, her body heaving, her eyes blank like she was in a coma. The sound bled into the video and for a brief moment, the deep moans of a man were mixed with the high whines of a woman.

"Oh, just listen to the sounds she's making. I bet she set this all up to get back at me for cheating on her. Well, joke's on her. I was going to divorce her anyway." He leaned backwards, putting his arms behind his back.

She wiped her tears furiously. "F-fuck you, Buck!"

"Baby, why are you so mad? With her gone, we can get married like we were planning. How about we honeymoon in the Cayman Islands? Or Barbados? Barbados is lovely this time of year--"

_ "Fuck  _ you, Buck, you heard me," she seethed, snatching her laptop back. "I'm sending this to every news agency in Washington. We're going to get her back to safety, and you can kiss my ass if you--"

Conna's head went white as Buck caught her by the back of her blazer and slammed her against the wall. She looked up, her eyes slowly turning terrified as Buck loomed over her. "You. Will. Not. Send. This. To. Anyone. You will go back into your office, and delete the video from any and all of our servers, and start taking calls. I'm expecting Senator Hong to phone in today. As far as I am concerned, we did not receive this video. This video does not exist. Understand?"

He pressed her face into the wall so hard her skull creaked and she saw stars.  _ "Understand?" _

"Yes, Mr. DeForge," Conna croaked. 

"And if I find out that you did, you will regret it. Not just you, but your entire family, your mother, father, and that brother of yours studying--what was it, music theory in San Francisco or something equally useless? I will make every single one of them regret the day you decided to go to the press." With that last flat, haunting promise, he stepped away, leaving her to cling to the wall.

As he turned back to his desk, Conna skittered away, closing the heavy oak door after her, and locking it securely. Her whole body trembled with adrenaline as she slid onto the floor, hands clamped over her mouth.

***

Conna sat in her leather office chair for a long time. Her cat clock ticked steadily beside her tiger striped mug, still with a ring of sticky coffee on the bottom. 

Her finger hovered over the DELETE button, the one that would wipe all traces of the video from the security system. It would disappear forever, a phantom that had never been there in the first place.

Mrs. DeForge's black, swollen eye stared at her through the grainy image. As if she were pleading. Begging.  _ Don't leave me here. _

Conna looked over her shoulder. Buck's door was still shut tight.

She clicked the bar on the upper taskbar and opened her personal email. She attached the video, and sent it to herself.

Every second of the  _ downloading _ hourglass made her heart speed up.  _ Please, please, please let me get away with this--  _ every creak and distant voice was making her jump.

It sent. 

Conna went to her  _ sent  _ folder and deleted all traces of it. Then she pulled up the video on the server, and deleted it forever.

She stared at the glowing screen for a moment, fingers digging into her sweaty palms. Waves of terrified regret washed over her.  _ I shouldn't have done that. I shouldn't have done that.  _ Paranoia and nausea made bile rise to her throat. 

The phone rang, startling her out of her reverie. She picked it up. "Hello, office of Buck DeForge? Hi, Senator Hong. I'll send you right in."

***

Conna took the subway home that evening. She put in her earbuds, trying to distract herself with Led Zeppelin and Metallica, but her mind kept drifting, afraid and watchful.

She got off on her street and walked down to her driveway. Conna Matthews rented a room in a two-story DC townhouse. Her roommate Jake's car was gone, she noted with relief--he and Tristan were probably hitting the nightclubs for the weekend.

Conna locked the door behind her and climbed the stairs to her room. Once inside, she locked that one too, then double-checked. She closed the curtains tightly. Then she threw her windbreaker on a pile of clothes and sat down at her desktop computer.

It took her a while to work up the courage to open the email. And when she saw the little toggle of a  _ video  _ attachment she almost shut down the computer them and there. But she gritted her teeth and finally clicked it.

Just seeing the video again made nausea surge in her throat. Mrs. DeForge's body twisted and arched in pain as the two heavy male bodies slammed into her like a ragdoll. 

Conna changed the screen resolution, and the video brightened. None of the men's faces became visible, to her frustration. But something did draw her gaze. A patch of floor was now visible. It had a unique geometric pattern of blue tiles. The style seemed vaguely familiar to her, but she couldn't place it.

She clicked play again, and winced as the man on top punched her hard in the face. There was no sound, but Conna could almost feel the  _ crack  _ from her computer screen. That man seemed to be the worst of the two. He was bigger and bulkier, with arms like tree trunks, and there was nothing gentle the way he handled her. He hit, punched, and forced himself inside her, as if he was enjoying her grief. Blood stained her splayed thighs.

Conna traced his form carefully, looking for anything, a mole or some distinguishing mark. He shifted his body sideways, reorienting himself, and her heart leapt. 

She sat up straight. Just visible for a moment as he turned his right arm, she saw a patch of puffy red skin on his upper arm, where a tattoo might have been once.

Conna screenshotted it. Then pressed play again.

The other man was shorter and slimmer, and seemed softer with how he treated her. He was always trailing his hands over her body, almost worshipfully. The camera started to pan down as he leaned over her--and Conna paused the video just before it started, just to catch the edges of dark curls over Mrs. DeForge's breast.

Conna zoomed in. The pixels were blurry and spread far apart, but--yes, those were dark curls. And what looked like the tip of a nose.

She screenshotted that too.

Near the end of the video, a man entered and forced her to suck him off. Conna swallowed bile as he thrust his length forcefully down her throat.

Only the hips and thighs of the third man were visible, and she couldn't see anything distinguishing, not even a scar.

And then… the worst part. Conna didn't even want to watch the end, and hear her plaintive screams. Just remembering them haunted her. But she needed to do it. She needed to hear the man's voice, to hear what language he was speaking in. She clicked play and squeezed her eyes shut.

It was only for a few seconds. Her screams struck deep into her heart. The male voice was deep and low, and echoed strangely. It sounded distant, like it was coming from outside the room. It did not sound anything like English, that was for sure. It almost sounded like--

It  _ was  _ coming from outside. It was a call to prayer.

Everything clicked together in that moment. The specific style of the tiles. The call to prayer. 

_ They're in North Africa. _

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!! I hope you are having a warm and loving day with your loved ones. And if you're not, then I hope this chapter will suffice to make you happier!  
> So we introduce the parallel plot that coincides with the "main" one. This will run concurrently with the chapters starring Shirley.


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shirley struggles to cope with her situation, while battling with her faith. The dynamics of the hostel have changed, and fast.

_As I was walking up the stairs_

_I met a man who wasn't there_

_He wasn't there again today_

_I wish, I wish he'd stay away_

  
  


Shirley smelled smoke.

Her broken body lay prone on the sweaty, stained sheets. The coppery smell of drying blood and the sickening smell of dead semen rushed through her nose whenever she breathed. She pulled her arms close to her body and tried to roll over. Her arm brushed her burn wound, and the pain made her lurch into reality.

She became hazily aware of voices in the background; blurry, if filtered through radio static.

"--UN ruins everything. I like a nice war. Gets my blood up and keeps me on my toes."

The memories rose like a tar pit of agony sucking her down. Blondie had taken her at the end, but she barely noticed. She had been halfway unconscious and unresponsive, and he had finished inside her quickly. She blearily thought that it was less about pleasure at that point--he had already pumped her throat and painted her face-- and more about depositing his semen beside those of the other two men, right inside her wet, overspilling cunt, out of some masculine desire not to be upshown.

Shirley's eyes focused, dried semen caking her eyebrows and eyelashes. The three men were sitting around the table, playing cards, chatting and smoking. The air around them had lost all tension, and they were talking as if they had been friends all their lives.

"I did some work in Syria, antiquities, you know, greasing various palms for gold statues and jewelry and such. To be frank. I wouldn't recommend it for a beginner. You need contacts. You need to know your way around. And you're going to be working with some very dangerous people--not, of course, to put myself down--" Fox laughed.

"I did some of that too, as a guard. It's peaceful. An AK-47 scares away most looters." Doe Eyes laughed. He sounded different from when he talked to her. His innocence had dropped off like a veil. She heard cards being slapped down distantly.

"I do believe I've won this round." 

Shirley slowly, agonizingly raised herself up on two elbows. Just the simple bend of her backbone hurt so much it made her want to collapse again.

"Oh, you little _cocksucker_ ," Fox growled.

"Calm down." This was Blondie. His voice was authoritative, silencing their arguments. "We're not betting anything. There's nothing for us to lose. We will never see each other again in a few months."

"Unless you want to bet on who gets to fuck Shirley next."

Shirley put her feet on the painted tiles and agonizingly stood up. Streams of cum flowed down her thighs, warm and fertile where they had been marinating inside her. They seeped past her thighs, down her quivering knees, and the first white drop dripped onto her ankle.

She took one agonizing step, her thighs trembling from pain--

"--I've been using lollies to get off fags, but looks like I just relapsed--" Blondie sighed.

As her bare feet hit the wooden floor, the three heads turned in tandem, cigarettes resting between their fingers, eyes ice blue and dull green and blank as a black marble.

Doe Eyes stood up suddenly, making to help her up, but Blondie barked, and slapped his card down. Doe Eyes' eyes went placid again as he sat down.

***

Shirley stumbled into the whitewashed bathroom with its flickering lights. She took a step over the rim of the bathtub, her leg chilling from the cold of the porcelain, and then collapsed into it.

The slam of the cold tub against her back made a mixture of pain and soothe creep over her body. She arched her back to settle into the bottom of the tub. The pain returned, heavy and searing, like a cattle prod pressed deep inside her. She wished it had been a cattle prod. Anything but those huge, hard, painful cocks dumping load after load inside her, barely letting her a moment's respite **.**

She shakily pulled the shower spigot over her, and turned it lukewarm. Then as she washed over her trembling legs, she slowly spread her legs and let it spray between her thighs.

The pain made Shirley wail. Her cry echoed against the dull white insides of the bathroom.

Every part of her hurt.

Blood and shreds of internal tissue swirled down into the silver drain, disappearing along with the rest of her faith in God.

 _God's not here,_ she realized quietly. God had abandoned her the moment her mother breathed her last breath. The moment her eyes closed, never to reopen, while Shirley was a hundred miles away, being interviewed on a radio show, on television, for one of Buck's many campaign issues.

God had left her then. And He had never returned. 

The agony crept into every corner of her limb, along with her despair. As the last of the diluted red stream washed into the drain, the last dribbles of her hope vanished. She knew what she was about to face as soon as she came out of that bathroom.

Shirley didn't know how long she spent crouching in that tub. The water went tepid around her ankles, and her tears dried on her cheeks. 

Then the door creaked open. Her body stiffened as leather shoes clicked onto the bathroom floor.

"You've been in here for a long time, love." Blondie's voice was deceptively gentle, in a way that made her want to crumble and fall into his arms.

She saw the neon light glint off his flaxen hair as he bent down besides her. "Tut tut tut. I hate to see a woman cry."

Those words made fresh tears rise to her eyes, and his thumbs went to wipe them away. He looked so different from the man he'd been yesterday, the man whose cock she had sucked and who she'd seen naked and pressed inside her. He was dressed in his familiar tan tweed suit, neatly fitted and cut tight above the shoulders, the quintessential gentleman. His hair was swept over his forehead and tucked behind his scalp in that familiar old-fashioned style, as if he had walked right out of an old 50's movie. He was a different man entirely, and she couldn't process it.

"Please," Shirley said, trying to keep her voice calm and from cracking. "I can pay. I can get people to pay. I have money, an inheritance. Whatever ransom you're waiting for, I'll liquidate my assets. I _have_ the money, however much you want, I CAN get it--" her voice was rising higher and higher until Blondie pressed one slender finger to her lips.

"Shirley," he said softly, conversationally. "Calm down. Stop fussing." She caught her breath and let it out in a shaky sob. "There, there." Blondie tucked a strand of wet hair behind her ear in a fatherly sort of way.

Shirley pressed her face into his stiff shoulder. Her breasts heaved.

His long fingers crept between her legs. They seeked out her small, worn clit, and began to caress it.

Her back arched against the porcelain of the tub as he slowly circled his fingers around her nub. Blondie delved into her, so gentle, and she almost forgot the pain and tear of her insides as he gently coaxed her to climax.

He kissed her throat, the tips of his dark blond hair tickling her face. "Every time I fuck you, that's one hundred and fifty dollars. I'm being generous, because I don't think you're worth much more than ninety."

His arm was pressed between her breasts and buried in her thighs, damp with bathwater. Her pink nipples hardened into peaks as she squirmed, dampness trickling down the sides of her breasts.

"And the other two, the drunk and the boy...every time they fuck you, let's say… three times a day. Now, I won't discount the drunk, who can really give it to you, but I think the boy is somewhat spryer and can probably do it more. I'll average it out." 

Shirley's heart was in her throat and tears were in her eyes as his hand churned in the frothing bathwater. Blondie's glasses were fogging up, and he took them off. His eyes were raw and lustful, cold and green, ringed with gray around the iris. 

"That's more than three thousand dollars a week. Let's also say, to be charitable, that it will take three months to get the negotiations settled."

The climax was spreading around her ruined thighs. Blood tinged the water from her torn insides as he fingered her to her miserable climax.

"So that's two hundred and seventy thousand dollars you owe us."

The warmth spread down her trembling thighs, her legs quivering underneath the bathwater. The pleasure overwhelmed her with the tips of his fingertips, his breath against her forehead, and the coil in her belly snapped. She arched her neck back, and he smiled that serpentine smile against her white neck.

"Can you pay us back? How much money do you have in your name? Or is it all your husband's?"

His fingernails turned into daggers into her pink cleft, and his breath became a lustful hiss.

"Oh, Shirley, you're not worth that much, with all the pleasure we're getting out of you."

God had left, and Shirley was in hell. 

***

And then, it was like a switch had flipped.

The heated tension, the hatred between the men that snapped between them whenever they met each others' eyes, the fistfights and arguments, had vanished. The affectionate joviality between the men had lost all of its vigilance, the vigilance that had been born through lifetimes of horror, brutality and hardship. They spoke with a warmth and a teasing brotherhood that stunned her. 

Every single ounce of pent-up testosterone was being pumped into her womb, forced down her throat and speckled over her heaving breasts. Shirley lived life in a non-stop haze of pain, her limbs aching, her neck aching, sores starting on the edges of her mouth--

And her pussy like a slash of agonizing fire between her legs.

The very day after her torn body had fully healed and her bruises faded to yellow, Blondie analytically stubbed out his cigarette, climbed on top of her, and raped her so brutally and impersonally that her throat ran ragged with screams. Shirley begged that her neighbors, whatever street passers-bye, would just _hear her--_ but her screams just echoed emptily down the street. 

Every day was much like the other, and she had completely lost track of time. All three of the men lavished her with savage attention. There was nary a moment when she wasn't on her knees or on her back. Shirley hated to admit any favoritism, but she liked Doe Eyes the best. He wouldn't slap her around unless she resisted. He played the lover, not the rapist, with kisses and caresses and his soft fingertips tickling her body. His warm skin pressed against hers provided with many shaky orgasms that made humiliation sweep across her body.

Blondie was not so bad, but had a cruel streak that could emerge when she wasn't expecting it. She always regretted letting her guard down around him. His favorite method was wrapping a belt around her throat as she sucked his cock, then tightening it as she choked and her throat squeezed his cock harder. The leather of his belt would bite into her flushed throat, and her shoulders would go taut as the oxygen fled her body, and her tears would flood down her cheeks just as his semen flooded down her throat.

In all other ways he was lustful, analytical, but restrained. Whenever she screamed too loud or her gaze winked out he ceased. He always stopped before he did too much damage.

Fox, though...

Fox was creative in his brutality. There were many positions, many ways he could experiment to make sex as painful for her as possible, and nary a time or a place he thought inappropriate. A punch to her face did as well as an offhand remark.

He seemed to have a strange fascination with hurting her face. Shirley's cheeks were constantly swollen with bruises from his knuckles. Not that the rest of her body escaped his wrath. He bit her breasts as he forced himself into her with his iron-hard, pumping cock. Twisted her nipples when she wasn't trying hard enough to please him. Kicked her ankles when she wasn't moving fast enough.

And the worst part was when Fox looked at her, smiled, and struck deeply and despairingly into her heart with one barb.

***

"What do you think about God, Shirley?" Asked Fox one day as he leaned against the cabinet.

Shirley wiped her swelling black eye as she tore open the packet of pasta. It hurt for her to walk, but at least now she _could_ walk. Her thighs were wet with fresh semen, but they always were now, and at least her black eye had gone down enough so she could see through it. She took few mercies. She was used to it by now. 

Fox wore his camo jacket over his bare chest. It was a hot desert day, and sweat trickled down his muscled chest, dripping down to the brief strip of pubic hair revealed by his low-slung jeans. He had no reason to cover up in here. Everyone had seen every part of him--and her.

His arm was draped loosely over the top of the cabinet as he smoked a cigarette slowly and lazily, watching her with those cold, calculating eyes. Flat eyes, cat eyes.

"I think He's always there for us," Shirley said tightly as she turned the burner up. She didn't want to agree with him. 

Fox's small pupils narrowed. "Oh, yes? Is He in here now, Shirley?"

Doe Eyes and Blondie were talking at the table. They were smiling. They were always smiling nowadays. They got along with each other.

"He is," she said shortly, wanting to end the conversation. 

The ice-eyed man took another drag and leaned in close to her. He blew the smoke into her face, and her eyes watered and wrinkled.

"Was he there when I fucked you for the first time in that shithole Bucharest apartment? Or when I had you on your hands and knees on the bed this morning, slamming your head into the headboard?" He lifted his finger to trace the slowly spreading bruise on her forehead.

Shirley gritted her teeth. _Shut up. Shut up._ She tried desperately to ignore him. She tried to tune his voice out as she added the spaghetti sauce to the pot. But he loomed over her, his voice striking her to the bone.

"Or, Shirley girlie, was he there when the kid, the old man and I all fucked you on camera for your precious husband to see? Pumped you full of our cum while you begged us to stop?"

The pot was boiling, tiny bubbles rising to the top. Her mind was boiling just as hot, throat tightening and tears starting to bead in her eyes. _Buck's going to see it. He's going to see every minute of it._

What had her old reverend always said? What was that verse? _Thy Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters. Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over._

 _Where were you, God?_ _Were you ever with me when they brutalized me? What about my mother? Were you with her then? Were you there for her as she died, or did she just die cold and forgotten and alone?_

"You religious types disgust me. Worshipping an imaginary ghost in the sky. God, Allah, Yahweh, none of them exist. You just keep trudging on and hoping he'll make your life better, like dogs following the scent of an invisible master. Slavering puppies, _slaves_ to a myth." His accent was slipping again, becoming something else as his excitement showed through his voice.

His voice went guttural as he stared into her eyes, cold and empty into her wide, trembling and bruised hazel eyes. And he said something that made her realize he was not simply the boorish, aggressive yokel she had assumed him as. 

"Like your famous American writer said. There is no God, no universe, no human race, no earthly life, no heaven, no hell. It is all a dream—a grotesque and foolish dream. Nothing exists but you. And you are but a thought—a vagrant thought, a useless thought. A homeless thought, wandering forlorn among the empty eternities." There was pleasure in his voice, but bareness as well, a certain sort of pessimism that made her wonder if she was imagining it, or if Fox was truly aware of the emptiness in his being.

Shirley was speechless and close to crying, and kept wiping away exhausted and horrified tears. _But without God… I'm all alone. Without God, I'm here and I'm… I'm…_ her heart was churning with contradictions, despair battling with a hope that had long since vanished. 

The woman snapped, and suddenly slammed the pan down on the kitchen table, so hard that the _clang_ made Blondie and Doe Eyes look over from the table.

"Help me cook," Shirley spat, "or leave me alone _."_ She put as much acid on her tongue as she could, but then internally cowered as his face went hard and cold.

Fox flinched minutely, then gripped her by her throat and swung her to face him. Her tiptoes grasped desperately for the floor.

_What was I thinking? Buck always hated when I argued with him._

"What the fuck did you just say to me? You cunt." He squeezed her throat, his pale eyes staring lividly into hers. "You little _sweet Christian housewife._ You just can't comprehend it, can you? That you're just a pawn? That you have no power here?"

The worst part was that she believed every word of it.

***

There were many creative positions they could force her in for one room. She'd been fucked against the door by Blondie while her breasts crushed the solid wood. She'd been driven into the tiles with Fox's heavy body laying on hers, making her back scream with pain. And right now, she was bent over the edge of the table, the sharp edge of the wood digging into her hipbone as she was fucked brutally whilst staring right into the amused eyes of her other captors.

Shirley stood on her very tiptoes as Fox slammed his body into her again and again, as solid as a sheet of metal, his hard cock splitting her in half. 

The empty packet of spaghetti was spilled over the counter.

The steady thrust of his hips made firebursts ignite in her belly as Blondie took a sip out of his tea. "By the look on her face, the lass is really getting it into it, mm?"

Shirley realized her mouth was gaping open, her tongue paralyzed, and snapped it shut, only to be met with derogatory laughs by Doe Eyes and Blondie.

Doe Eyes giggled good-naturedly. "Shirley looks beautiful no matter what she has on her face."

Doe Eyes leaned forward, taking her chin in his hand. He kissed her slowly and deeply, almost hesitantly, as if they were teenagers at a drive-in theater and not a captor and his slave who was being raped in front of his eyes. She could feel the brush of his thick black curls against her face, and the smell of tart spices on his smooth shaven face.

The sunlight filtered in through the curtains, sending the hot Moroccan sun dancing over the brightly-lit tiles and faded red carpets on the wall. Dust and sand from the streets had been tracked into the doorwell, she distantly noticed, and she would be required to clean it up later. 

Fox shifted his hips against hers, grinding his thick, pulsing length one last time. His cock, which had been swelling steadily for the last few seconds, erupted with thick seed. Shirley hung her head, dingy blonde locks hanging lankly as it soaked her womb. When he pulled out, it dripped down her thighs in two lukewarm streams. Her fingernails bit into the tabletop.

"You men play cards too often," said Fox easily. "How about a nice game of chess?"

"You can play chess?" Said Blondie. He half-snorted, half-laughed. He flipped his card over, and smirked harder. His hair shone buttery bright in the sunlight, but she could see salt-and-pepper strands weaving their way between them.

Shirley was still slumped over the table, but she could hear Fox buckling his jeans, and his voice, heavily annoyed. "Do you think I'm not that smart? You think I can't play chess?" His voice had dropped a few octaves into a growl, and she instinctively shivered with fear.

"You're about as sharp as a hockey puck, Russkie. How about you stop bothering Shirley and let her make dinner now?"

It was a very Blondie sort of thing to say, and he said it easily, but she could feel Fox grow rigid behind her. "Why don't you repeat that, you blond son of a bitch? Say it to my face."

Blondie and Doe Eyes exchanged a private sort of laughter again, subtly excluding him, and that was answer enough. She felt the joyful atmosphere they had cultivated for the last week fall twenty degrees colder.

***

That night, she could still sense Fox's sullenness. It was a talent she had cultivated over years of marriage. Whenever Buck came one with a less-than-bright smile on his face, she knew to fix his favorite dish. And when he came home yelling at her, she knew she had to do whatever he wanted in bed that night.

Fox had the same darkness in him that night, and she could tell.

Blondie had been on the phone all night, snarling and arguing and finally blossoming into a relieving smile.

Blondie was tucking his white dress shirt around him and straightening his tweed coat. "I'll be back in a few, poppet," he said to her hurriedly, and gave her a brief kiss on the cheek. 

"This is good, this is important," he said to Doe Eyes, speaking so rapidly she could barely parse his words. "This is it ** _,_** we're going to be out of here in no time, I swear." He sounded like he was at the end of his rope, and his rope extended into heaven. He was smiling ear to ear. He crooked a finger towards Doe Eyes, who got up immediately to put his coat on and follow him out. 

The soft-eyed boy smiled at her as he left the hostel, and she felt sick as he left. She didn't want to be alone here, with Fox, but she knew that this could be the end of her ordeal. Shirley curled up on the twin bed as Fox lit a cigarette and turned the radio up. An Arabic language song turned on, and the shifting, high vocals accompanied her to sleep.

***

Like that fateful night in Bucharest, Shirley was shaken awake by a man with a dark, dredging mind, a mind so consumed with grudges and hatred she couldn't even conceive of it. A man whose past was a cataclysm of misery and murder.

"Shirley," he said in a soft voice, unmarried by alcohol this time. For once, she couldn't parse his tone. It was even, deep and blank.

"Can you play chess?"

_When I came home last night at three,_

_The man was waiting there for me_

_But when I looked around the hall,_

_I couldn't see him there at all_

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yay we made it to chapter 10! Thank you for all the support and kudos, couldn't have done it without you!


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fox and Shirley... play chess.

Shirley sat up and wrapped her arms around her legs. The light of the lamp showed dim against the colorful, faded rugs on the walls, and glinted dully over the muted tiles.

The blonde woman had taken to wearing less. Her clothes always got ripped off in the end, so why bother? She wore a light tank top and panties, suitable for the desert heat. She had given up modesty a long time ago, but the piercing look in Fox's eyes still made her want to cover herself.

The orange glow of the lamp glinted off his sweat-slicked black hair. His face was thrown in shadow, but she could feel the coldness of his eyes boring into her.

Goosebumps rose on her skin. "It's been a long time. I'm not sure if I remember…"

"So you do? Get up, then." His voice left little room for argument. She got up.

The small round table was set up with a small, scratched-up chess set, one that would fit in his pocket. His camo jacket was draped over the back of the chair, and Shirley wondered what else was hiding in those tightly buttoned pockets.

Fox sat down and indicated the opposite chair. Her toes curled in fear, but she took the seat.

"You have got white. It's just chivalrous. You know me. I am a chivalrous man." She couldn't tell whether he was being sarcastic or not. His voice was unreadable.

Shirley's father had used to play chess with her on the few occasions they were together. When she had learned to play, that was one of the few things she could convince him to do with her. His stern, unsmiling face morphed into Fox's. Both had the same broad bowline jaw. The same stubble starting on their chin. But Fox had a deeper danger in those pale blue eyes.

Her survival instinct had kicked in like a prey animal. She forced a smile at him and stared at her pieces. "They think you can't play chess. They're small minded. They don't know the real you."

The heat in the air became boiling. He was slumped, eyes cold and hard and rapidly changing.

She toyed with the edge of a knight. 

"I think they underestimate you. They think you're just a common brute. But I don't. I know you're more, under your surface." She tried to keep the shiver out of her voice. 

Fox's eyes went lazy and content. She could tell he liked her words. But his voice still snapped sharp. "Make your move."

Shirley hesitantly moved one pawn. She could feel him calculating, then he carefully moved one pawn as well. It was a hot night, but she felt cold inside. The silence was weighing on her ears as she hesitated, then moved another pawn. It had been so long since she had played. Her best friend had taught her in school, and they used their breaks to practice and gossip. _Those were simpler times._

She forced fawning into her voice. "Where did you learn to play chess?"

"An old man in the apartment below me. When I wanted to get away from my family, I would visit him. He taught me to play chess." Fox smiled wide, his eyes crinkling. "Let's play another game, Shirley girlie, just like we did in Bucharest. I'm feeling playful tonight. How about every time you take one of my pieces, I answer one of your questions. And every time I take one of yours, you answer one of mine."

That night in Romania rose again in her mind, shaky and incorporeal. The smell of bitter vodka on his breath. The sourness and terror on her breath as he rumbled _let's play a game._

Shirley forced those thoughts away. She shifted in her chair, her mouth dry as cotton. _Maybe I can get him to reveal more about his background,_ she thought _._ When she finally got out of here (and Shirley _would)_ she would need all the details she could get to nab these bastards (and she _really_ would _,_ she thought venomously).

"That sounds… all right. Let's do it."

Fox was the first to take out one of her pieces. He knocked one of her pawns over. "My turn. Shirley, did your father cheat on your mother?"

The question hit her like an electric jolt. "What makes you think so?" She said quickly.

"There must be a reason why you're so slavishly loyal to that husband of yours. I bet your mother was the same way, and she taught it to you."

Her throat was tight. "I…" phantasms of memories rose in her mind, of her mother yelling at her father, her voice pitching high from the next room. And her father's booming voice, _every man has his needs, Naomi. You shouldn't care about what I do off the base. You get my salary. Shut your mouth_. And then her mother would go quiet, that devastating silence that would linger for days after her father departed.

Fox's voice reminded her of her father's booming voice, a little bit, and she shook her head to get rid of the memory.

"He had girlfriends in his ports." Shirley kept her answer short, and focused on the chess board. If she could just get her knight out...

She could feel his self-satisfied silence from the other end, and focused furiously on the chess board. Soon she knocked out one of his rooks. "My turn." She was on the offensive in more ways than one. "I heard Blo--the old man call you Russkie. Are you Russian?"

Fox gave a smile so wide it touched his cheekbones. "Nyet. They have a word for people like me in Russian. It isn't a nice one." His eyes flicked to meet hers. "Tread carefully, Shirley. Don't ask the wrong questions."

She could see the implicit threat in his voice, and knew she was walking perilously close to asking too much about his background. She would have to be more subtle. 

Shirley knocked down one of his bishops. Fox's forehead ticced. Her ruined body felt a surge of confidence. _Not as good as you thought you were, huh, Fox? Hurts your pride, doesn't it?_

She tried a different approach. "Where did you get that scar?" She pointed to the thick strip of red scar on his upper arm. 

Fox's pale eyes flicked down, and he lifted a calloused finger to trace it. "Got it while I was locked up. Had my friend Yuri burn it off. I killed him later. Washed every bit of my identity away." His voice was still dropping, deep and humorless. He knew her angle. She was probing too deep, and his playfulness was gone. She ground her teeth and gave him the next casualty in the game.

Fox then struck as deep into her as she did him. "What did your mother think about that? That her husband was off fooling around while she was at home?"

Shirley ground her teeth. The small, analytical part of her told her to stay calm. "She," she said, "she didn't like it. But she understood it." She made her next move with her bishop, but Fox did not make his move back. He was sitting back, broad arms crossed over the other, cold eyes fixed on hers. She knew she would have to elaborate, and felt sick. She didn't want these memories.

"My grandma had left long ago. She'd gone back to Korea one day and didn't leave a note or a return address. Her father, my grandfather, never talked about her again. But he didn't treat my Mom that well after that. He had a--a lot of girlfriends too. And Mom, I guess she…" Shirley was spilling too much, and her mouth snapped shut. 

Fox laughed loudly. "Sounds like your grandmother had the guts to do what you never will."

 _Buck would never,_ Shirley thought in a surge of horror. He was so sweet, so wonderful, he was her hard working husband and he praised her in his speeches and he never, _never_ would think of something like that. He was not her father, and Buck had said so over and over.

Shirley remembered her mother's memories, those small secrets she had whispered into her daughter's ear. How much Mom missed her own mother, even the bad parts--the sound of her guttural curses and the bitter smell of _soju_ on her breath. And then the loss in Mom's life when she had disappeared, her father's rage and the way he took it out on her--

Shirley clamped her memories shut and put on her politician's face. She fixed him with a cold glare and took out a knight with one movement. 

***

"What made you like this? What kind of a boy were you? What a poor little boy you must have been. I think you're just as lonely as the 'old man', but in a different way. Career aside, your personality is so awful. Who would voluntarily stay in your life?"

Fox laughed. "Don't feel pity for me."

"I don't feel pity for you. I pity the boy you were, the man you might have been, instead of _you,_ sitting in front of me with all his faith lost and nothing left in his life."

"You say that like it's a bad thing." Fox reached his arms behind his neck.

His puffy scar shone dull in the lamplight, like a trickle of red ice cream. His smile was going dead along the edges.

"I've seen things that you wouldn't believe, Shirley Duncan." Fox used her maiden name, and said it so intimately it made spiderwebs creep over her skin.

"My mother used religion to keep me in line. There was no other reasoning she could use. She could always quote a passage of the book that would explain why it was right to beat me into an inch of my life."

Fox idly moved a knight away from its position guarding the king. She noticed immediately. He was distracted in some deep corner of his mind.

"I've killed a lot of people, and they all prayed before they died. Most of them pissed themselves, too, how's that for dying gracefully? I respect them more for that than for praying."

They were no longer playing a game. He had retreated into himself, and she was cornering him.

"Sometimes it's good to have hope," Shirley said, although she had none. She moved her own knight a square. Against her will, she remembered a verse from the bible. _The servant is not greater than his master._ To be a Christian is to strive, to suffer, to despair. And still, to keep Him in your heart.

She blinked wetness out of her eyes.

Fox's voice was quiet and unreadable. "It seems like most wars start because of religion. People who look the same and act the same, hating each other for some vague, undefined reason, which sky puppet said what or which prophet said they can't eat this or that. I've seen it, over and over and over, again and again and again. It never changes. It never will. In the end we are all equal. All dead, with nothing to show for it." 

Fox clicked his queen forward, and he shouldn't have. He was distracted, by something in his brain or his memories. Shirley saw that he was wavering, and took her chance.

"Do you know what I think?" Shirley said tonelessly. "You come up with so many excuses. But you've lived in hell so long, you've become comfortable with it."

His distraction showed in the flicker of his pale eyes, of the sweat that slicked his neck.

Shirley took out his king with her knight in one move, and tipped it over the edge of the chessboard. The black chess piece rolled off the table onto the floor, and stilled, rocking to a stop with the dim light glinting off its chipped surface.

"I know why you don't why believe in God," she said softly, her voice barely resounding in the quiet, dim room.

"And I think you know this, too. Because if there is a heaven, or paradise… you know you’re not going there."

***

Fox was silent for a long time. 

Shirley didn't know what that silence held. He sat with his head tilted down, face unreadable.

The headlights of a taxi flashed outside the window, the light traveling over the faded rugs on the wall and the peeling lamp beside the bed.

Fox stood up, and she cowered instinctively. She hunched her shoulders as he moved behind her. For being such a big man he moved like a cat, silently and quickly. He put his hands on her shoulders and rubbed his thumbs in circles, then they dipped lower.

Shirley couldn't see his face, and that terrified her. Her heart was pumping in her throat. As his hands went to brush between her breasts, they paused as her heart thudded against his fingers.

The ice-eyed man's voice was quiet and absolutely unreadable. "I underestimated you **,** Shirley. I really did." 

She was shaking now. Something about his soft voice was striking terror deep into her heart. She had no idea what was going on in his mind, whether it was veiling utter hatred or hesitant respect. As his hands delved under her t-shirt and cupped warm around her breasts, she nearly sobbed with fear. "Go ahead and lie on the bed, Shirley," he whispered in her ear.

He had asked her. _Asked_ her. Not yanked her over and thrown her down on the bed while unbuckling his jeans.

Shirley stood up on shaky legs and went over to sit on the edge of the mussed-up bed. He moved to stand in front of her, staring down at her with his face blank and unreadable.

"Take off your clothes."

Trying to fight down a whimper, she pulled her t-shirt over her head. Her large, heavy breasts erupted in prickles as his ice-cold eyes focused on them.

"Please," Shirley whispered, her voice cracking, "can you… this time, can you… wear a condom this time, please?" she felt wretched and pathetic, having to beg him for the smallest, puniest thing. 

The dark-haired man cocked his head at her, then his face cracked into that familiar, fanged, disturbing smile.

"Make love to me and I will. Reciprocate. Put your arms around me, like you would your husband. Kiss me. Say you love me. And I'll wear your fucking condom."

She cast her eyes down and nodded.

***

Shirley heard him take something from a pocket of his jacket, and heard the crinkling noise of a condom wrapper being torn. She lay down and slid her panties off as he pulled off his shirt and began to undo his pants. 

Shirley tried to keep her eyes on the ceiling. She was sick to her stomach at what she was being forced to do.

Fox got on top of her. The simple act of him mounting her already had her in pain--he weighed so much, and he pressed her into the mattress so deeply she felt the metal springs against her back. He nudged one leg apart with his knee, and the deliberate gentleness in which he did it made goosebumps wash over her skin.

Shirley wanted to pray violently. No, she wanted insult God violently. She thought in despair. _Fuck God,_ she thought suddenly and spitefully. _Why would you do this to me? You've abandoned me a long time ago. After Dad. After Mom--_

Thinking about her mother made Shirley suddenly wonder about her words towards Fox. _If Mom is dead, then where has she gone? If God doesn't exist, then what did she--_

Fox's breaths were deep and low as he edged into her. The slide of his dick was not forceful for once, and the swollen cockhead punctured her small, contracting hole slowly, before the head slid past and the rest of his shaft bulbed between the pink stretched lips.

His broad hips tensed again, and measuredly thrust forward. He leaned down until they were face to face. The tips of his black hair tickled her face, and his eyes locked onto hers--and then her entire body froze in absolute terror.

His eyes bored into her, completely arctic in their absolute freeze, his pupils unwavering and fixed completely on her. Shirley was feeling something she had never felt before--not during lovemaking with Buck, not even during their first time, not ever. Fox was focusing on her, utterly and completely, with every tense muscle taut against her body.

In those eyes she saw hatred and lust so intense it seared her to the bone.

With each measured thrust, she could tell he was barely restraining himself from slamming her into the mattress like a ragdoll. His arms flexed, veins standing straight against his skin like he wanted to wrap his hands around her throat.

Between his gritted teeth, Fox ground out lividly, "Reciprocate right now, you fucking cunt. Treat me like your limp-dicked husband. _Go on."_

Shirley felt like she had when Doe Eyes had slammed her into the stone wall, wrapped his hands around her throat and choked the life out of her. She could hear the same tone as Doe Eyes' in Fox's voice, see the same bubbling swamp in his eyes. She knew, right then and there, that she was an inch away from dying.

In his voice and eyes and in the rock-hard, tensed muscles pressed against her, she knew that he wanted nothing more but to kill her for what she had said to him. Shirley felt her entire body go _tharn._

Shirley slowly forced herself to put her shaking arms around his broad shoulders. She closed her eyes tight and lifted her mouth to meet his.

His pants huffed over her face like a bull. His lips were drawn in a snarl, teeth clenched, but still she tried to draw him into a kiss. Her entire body was trembling like a rabbit, toes pointed at the air as he thrust inside her shallowly.

The latex glided over her walls, smooth and slick, but she could feel the heat of his pulsing cock underneath. It was as rigid and hot as a piece of iron, and barely restraining itself from slamming into her so hard it would bruise her walls and punch her cervix. His hips ground against her, shaking from the willpower not to rape her until she screamed. 

Not wanting to see his face anymore, Shirley buried her face in the crook of his neck. His hips sped up, forcing deeper into her pussy, the friction making electricity tingle her nipples. 

She could see, over his shoulder, the mirror that hung opposite the bed. It showed two bodies on a narrow bed, lit dimly by the bedside lamp to shade them in orange. A back as broad as an ox, and two slender legs curled hesitantly around a huge waist. The back was covered in rippling muscles, and tensed as it heaved forward again and again.

His pubic bone rubbed against her clit deliciously, and a shock of warmth burst through her body. Despite the absolute terror wracking her body, her breaths sped up. She clung onto him for dear life as the bed started to shake, the headboard making the plaster wall crumble.

That familiar burning pleasure was beginning to lick her insides, building into an inferno with every lave his cock gave her warm insides. She was clenching down on him now, her pussy contracting against her will as his huge length gave one last frantic push. 

Red, fiery heat finally burst in her belly and she sucked in gasps of air as he rode her to climax. And for a moment, she could not tell the difference between heightened terror that swamped her body, and the pure blissful warmth that washed over her body.

Finally his body went taut, molded completely against her, and juddered. He let out a shaky breath into her ear. 

His solid frame broke away from her, and she could breathe again. The dry, cool air clung to her sweat-soaked belly.

As his cock slid away from her, her pussy spasmed, feeling empty without it filling her with its huge hardness.

There was a pocket of white cum on the tip of his condom. As he slid it off his cock, it looked like a gray, wet snake, hanging limply in his fingers.

Shirley could smell their mixed sweat and juices, sour and warm and choking. She closed her legs, thighs sticky, and her hand went up to rub the bleariness from her eyes.

Fox snapped her legs open in one movement. "Wh--" she started, then saw the look in his eyes and went utterly silent.

The black-haired man's fingers clenched her thigh so hard that bruises began to blossom under his fingertips. With his opposite hand, he used his fingers to spread open her lower lips, until her pink, quivering insides were on display. They spread like a bloodshot flower, with wetness dripping out of them.

He pressed the lip of the filled condom against the very inside of her pussy and tilted the end of it upward, so that the cum began to trickle down the inside of the condom.

Her hips jumped. "You said--" she squeaked.

"Aren't you a Christian? Isn't it a sin to spill your seed on the ground?" His voice was quiet and completely livid, and terrified her into silence.

Shirley forced her body to still as the cum began to drip down into her body, lukewarm and thick like a worm squirming its way through her body. The thought of his potent seed penetrating deep into her and making her swell with a heavy, dark-haired child--her body wracked with shudders as a sob battered at her throat. Her fingers gripped the tan duvet, so hard her fingers bore holes in the fabric.

He flattened the end of the condom between his thumb and forefinger and squeezed the remnant of semen left in the condom to finish inside her with a few drips. She felt it well from between her pussy lips to drip down her thigh. She felt like a glass that had been filled to the brim, her birth canal wet and overflowing with semen.

There was a smile on Fox's face--a brutal grimace. She suddenly thought of feral animals, and how they grinned to show their teeth before an attack. His eyeteeth shone white and gleaming in the flickering light of the lamp. 

"You know," he said, "when you go, Shirley, I might miss you a little bit. Where will I ever find someone who I can violate in so many ways, and who only looks up at me like a kicked puppy?"

He lifted his fist one last time, and punched her in the face so hard her brain didn't even register the pain.

Out of her less swollen eye, she hazily watched him throw the condom away violently and slammed her upper body into the bed. She instinctively tried to curl up, one hand going to her eye, but he flattened his hands on either side of her neck and pushed himself into her again.

Her eye finally exploded with searing pain, bursting through her head like a firework of agony. She was retreating deep into herself, unable to speak, unable to think because of the pain.

Fox's hips quivered against hers as he brutally forced the semen deep into her with the tip of his cock, driving away the pleasure that had softened her inside walls. Her chest heaved and she twisted her neck to bury it in the pillow. 

She almost didn't notice the hateful way he was fucking her now. Her head was throbbing so hard, so consistently painful, each throb like a thumb being forced into her frontal cortex.

 _Please end. I'll do anything. End already. Let this all be a bad dream. Let me wake up and just go back_ home _and...and..._

She thought of the ranch house, and her mother, dimly. And her warm arms, and the way she shushed her when she got a scraped knee,

She thought of her mother standing and looking at her, filthy and violated all over, and turning away in disgust. No soft kisses any more. No comfort, ever again. 

And she finally cried.

_***_

When Fox finished, he rolled off of her, and the sudden loss of weight on top of her made her gasp. She tried to pull away, but he locked his arms around her back and pulled her into his chest.

She felt like an insect that had fallen into water, struggling desperately to free herself against something she had no hope of defeating. The heat of his body felt like a furnace, and he clutched her so hard her ribs creaked.

Every inch of his skin was damp from the desert heat, and sweat slicked their bodies as they shifted against each other. Everything about him suddenly disgusted her--his smell, his body, his deep, heaving breaths. She wrenched her head away from his shoulder and rested the side of her head against his arm. The tender, bruised skin of her eye meeting his shoulderbone made pain flash through her eye socket once again. Her head spiked with agony.

Shirley's heart thrummed lazily as her adrenaline crashed. Fatigue overtook her body, and even with the pain in her eye, the fear and the unbearable heat, she let her mind sink into sweet darkness.

***

The crash of the door slamming open woke her immediately. Jerking out of sleep, Shirley struggled to sit up, and she heard the voice before her eyes focused.

"--up, you fookin whore. Get up. _Up!"_

Shirley was distantly trying to puzzle out who was saying it--her left eye, where she had been punched, was unfocused and bleary, and she could barely see a blurry figure dressed in tan before it marched up to her and dragged her off the bed.

Her feet met the cool tiles--her head spun--and then she was slammed against the wall, Blondie shouting in her ear. His voice was so loud it made pain lance through her already hurting brain.

"--almost convinced you have something to do with this. Why else would you still be here? Do you get off on this, what we're doing to you? Does your _husband_ get off on this?"

"That's enough."

Shirley hated how glad she was to hear Fox's voice. The taller man's solid body thrust between them, still unsteady from sleep **,** chest muscles still hard and glistening from his previous exertion.

"What's your tantrum about, old man? What did our clients have to say?" He pushed Blondie to make him stagger back heavily.

Blondie sat down on the bed, took his glasses off, and wiped his sweaty brow. His tan suit was crumpled. "Our contact," he said bitterly, "said he hasn't been in contact with our clients for weeks. So our contacts got ahold of DeForge's campaign, and they were told that _she--_ " he jerked his head toward Shirley "--is still hospitalized. There's been no acknowledgement that she's gone. Nothing's going to press, there's not a single admittance that she's _anywhere_ but a hospital and that everything in the campaign is anything but the _bloody_ bee's knees." 

Blondie snarled the last part at her, and she recoiled, covering her bare breasts with her arms.

A shadow moved beside her, Doe Eyes trying to drape his black jacket over her shoulders. "Shir-ley. Don't worry." His sing-song voice never changed in tone as he slid his slim arms around her waist.

Shirley tried to press herself against the wall, but Doe's soft body was a cushion between her and the ragged rugs hanging on the rock walls.

"I _didn't,"_ Shirley said, the remnants of her tears still drying on her cheeks. "I didn't, haven't done anything, I want to get out of here, you _know_ how much I'd give to be away from yo _uuuu-"_

But Blondie was in front of her again, eyes so livid they melted from dull green to vivid gray like a wave of a polluted sea. He gripped her wrist--he was so _strong._ But how _could_ he be this strong, he was getting on in years with the wrinkles and frown lines already etching his face--

But when he slammed her into the wall, she felt the muscles of a mercenary kept hard and strong even through time.

Blondie's hands forced between her legs, and there was nothing but bile he spat in her face.

"If worse comes to worse," the blond man breathed, "We may have to do something very _drastic."_

Her hazel eyes were wide and brimming with tears of terror as she met his eyes through the cold panes of his glasses

"So they know you are in… _special danger."_

Shirley felt the cold, cold edge of his voice as he smiled, baring white, perfect teeth. And Doe's soft, slow breaths over her nape.

And Blondie's cold fingertips caught her clit and _twisted_ so hard her throat tore in a ragged scream that echoed along the empty streets of Chefchouen.

Credit goes to Clitemnestra for this stupendous and classy art of Blondie!!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know the torture tag is probably worrying some of you, so I'm going to say right now that this chapter and chapter 12 are as bad as it's going to get. Things will be taking a different direction after that. Also, hopefully the next chapter will come out much sooner. I know the update schedule has been pants for a while 😅
> 
> Credit to the incredible fanart of Blondie goes to @clitemnestralove on tumblr!! ♡♡


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